


Design Your Universe

by ValloryRussups



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Elemental Magic, F/F, F/M, Harry goes to another school, Inventor!Harry, M/M, Minister!Tom, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2017-02-10
Packaged: 2017-12-24 20:43:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValloryRussups/pseuds/ValloryRussups
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When James kicks Harry (16) out, a school in a different dimension lures him in with the promise of knowledge. Weird magical abilities resurface, Minister Riddle schemes, Grindelwald spectacularly vanishes, and oh, do you know how tricky creature politics are?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Something Is Still Missing

**Author's Note:**

> To Clear Things Up: Tom Riddle is a Minister of Magic. No, he hasn’t been a Dark Lord, but who knows what’s boiling under the surface? Lily dies giving birth to Harry, for which James blames the boy. His parents force him into a marriage of convenience with the Browns to boost up family fortune, and a year later it bears fruit – a baby girl Lavender, who thus becomes Harry’s half-sister. Regulus is alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To Clear Things Up: Tom Riddle is a Minister of Magic. No, he hasn’t been a Dark Lord, but who knows what’s boiling under the surface? Lily dies giving birth to Harry, for which James blames the boy. His parents force him into a marriage of convenience with the Browns to boost up family fortune, and a year later it bears fruit – a baby girl Lavender, who thus becomes Harry’s half-sister. Regulus is alive.

It all started with a lost key.

At first, Harry didn’t pay any attention.

His stepsister had run off with the crush of her life. His father was letting out some steam on an Auror mission and would probably return only to rave or drown his sorrows about the loss of his second wife in whatever alcoholic liquid he could find. His friends, Hermione and Terry Boot, were suddenly needed elsewhere, and Luna behaved as far-off as a star on the nightly shore. And Harry himself had to receive an Order of Circe, First Class from the Minister himself in a month’s time.

All in all, life was busy.

“Hmm... Here it says to stir clockwise until the potion acquires a bluish tint,” Harry read aloud, a huge, old, leather-bound potions volume in one hand and a stirring stick in the other. He frowned. Something didn’t add up. He turned the page. Caught a short, inconspicuous paragraph at the end of it. Read it.

“But how can it be, when too many clockwise stirs lean the damn thing towards the pinkish side of the spectrum?”

Ah, out-dated Potions tomes. Ever the conundrum.

He couldn’t begin to comprehend how people had fared with even less knowledge than Harry could access now.

Harry swept his private laboratory with a cursory glance. It landed on the wide storeroom filled with numerous vials, bottles and small pouches, all filled with healing herbs, extracts of venomous plants, pickled animal bits, and powders so mysterious to his father or Lavender but ordinary for Harry.

Distractedly whipping out his wand to direct it at the cauldron and charm the stirring stick to continue stirring, Harry walked over to the storeroom and rummaged through the top shelf.

_Should be somewhere in this direction... This? Oh no, these are harpy’s feathers... Cat’s eyes... Acromantula silk... Weird. I thought I’d run out of this stuff- Here!_

Like a victorious war general, Harry drew his hand out of the storeroom and raised it to the dim candlelight, inspecting the findings.

“Not first class, of course, but it will do,” he decided loudly. Talking to himself helped him. It might be an annoying habit to some, but to Harry, who had been mostly ignored in his life, hearing his own voice was a blade-sharp reminder that he was still alive, still there, still a normal human, living, breathing, walking, talking.

He clutched the phoenix feather tighter.

Harry wished... He wished to make his father proud. He wished his father to sincerely hug him and praise him, not with those drawn-out, tired half-smiles and crooked grins, but ones filled with warmth and affection and love. The sort of tenderness James generously gifted Harry’s half-sister, Lavender, with, the fruit of their shared father’s second marriage with Acacia Brown.

 _Some wishes are meant to remain wishes_ , Harry told himself sternly even as he set the phoenix feather on the miniature table and diced a mandrake root. Precise movements. Level cuts. Perfect. _This man will never know pride in his own son even if that comes to bite him in his bony arse._

That’s James Potter for you. Always the stubborn ass.

The cauldron bubbled and Harry rushed to it just in time to soothe the seething liquid with the smooth dices of the mandrake root, the last one in his stock.

 _Need to buy some more_ , a thought coursed through Harry’s mind as he watched the potion in process devour the plant, quickly drowning it in its depths and depleting, and the root vanished in mere moments of Harry’s silence.

He fingered the locket lying placidly on his collarbones, barely hidden by the black fabric of the collar of his black shirt.

When Lily Potter, Harry’s mother and one true love of his father, had died, sweaty and panting and exhausted after giving birth to him, her only parting words had been to gift him with that locket, that it was a matter of utter importance and he must never part with it, because only that small crystal butterfly with the words _Crystal Spire_ engraved on one of its exquisite wings in a silver delicate scribble could protect him.

Protect from what? Harry wanted to ask now, after the years had vanished into dust and all questions bumped right into the insurmountable barrier of the afterlife.

Alas, Lily Potter was long dead and all Harry could do was heed her words and wear the chain and the locket daily, no matter how girly it used to make him feel in the beginning, ages ago.

As lost in brooding as Harry was, when he raised his hand, the phoenix feather clutched tight in it and about to touch upon the surface of the potion, his fingers faltered and the bright red feather slipped out and fell, down, down, down, and all Harry could do was stare in paralyzed fear as the ingredient dropped, and the gooey mass engulfed it as it had the mandrake root minutes ago.

“ _Protego_!” Harry cried out, bright green eyes wide with horror and urgency.

The wand _swoosh_ ed in his hands to protect him from the impending doom of a potion mistake.

An explosion and a rash of mist – and Harry fell to the ground. His eyes closed.

At least, his shielding-charms knowledge ensured he _would_ wake up.

{ **Design Your Universe** }

When he woke up, it wasn’t pretty.

Harry cracked his eyes open, and white ceiling loomed into view, taunting him with its highness when Harry found out he had problems pushing himself off the floor. And speaking about floors...

Defeated, Harry propped his weight onto his elbows and surveyed his home potions lab.

A sticky substance of bright purple stuck to all the objects of furniture it could reach, from a spindly chair Harry used to sit on while stirring an experiment of his, to the lower half of the ingredients cabinet. The floorboards were covered with the disgusting slime as well as with the splinters of the table that had collapsed when the potion had consumed its legs. And that’s not even starting on some glass shards from the vials with animal bits and small bottles of venoms and bloods, and the ingredients themselves: a wide range of intermingling flowers, powdered horns, feathers, and liquids, which had been precariously resting on the table.

Harry could understand Snape for once. Nothing could deal more damage than a fucked-up potion, especially when you mixed mandrake roots and phoenix feathers and slimeball’s slime – the aggressive goo ate up even enchanted metal and only the safety spells Harry had cast on the floor, the walls and the doors of the cabinet prevented it from doing away with those, too, and burning to the lower floors, spreading right into James’s room.

_Now, how do I fix it?_

When Harry moved upwards, determined to get on his feet, a strand of long black hair fell into his eye. Irritably, he blew it away from his face. Usually he tied the ebony black, long locks with a hair tie, but it had snapped, probably sometime during his fall or when he had lain unconscious.

His eyes swept the disaster with another long look.

_Charming. Just wait for James to see this. Tonight, I fear, will be full of spittle and splutter. He’s going to be incensed-_

“Harry?” a voice shouted and a veneer of ice coated Harry’s insides. Terror, shock, trepidation – the emotions burst and bubbled just under the surface of his outwardly calm countenance.

_He isn’t supposed to be here! Just my luck. If this slime bucket Snape now comes too, I’ll eat a galleon and choke to death._

“I heard an explosion. Are you all righ-“

It trailed off.

Harry pivoted on his heels and, like he would a particularly curious potions ingredient, observed his father.

“Yes, father,” he murmured dutifully as he eyed the thinking process reflecting in the man’s eyes while James was taking in the depressing wretch Harry had made out of his potions lab. “I’m all right. Thanks for asking, even though you look like you have fallen in love with this wrecked table – and no, a _Reparo_ won’t make it – and don’t seem to care much for my injuries.”

James’s face went red in blotches, the blush not spreading evenly like on someone else’s face.

Harry’s comment tore the man’s face away from the splinters and the shards and onto his son’s grimace of apology. It was not accepted.

James choked, but no noise escaped him. He pushed the sounds through his vocal cords, and yet the words refused to form, and he remained like this: standing in his ridiculous Auror outfit, hair nested on his head in a wild mess, and glasses askew from the running he must have done.

The man _needed_ to calm down.

“Gobbledegook helps,” Harry supplied quickly, helpfully. “If you know the numbers, that is. If you don’t, this is a perfect opportunity to visit our home library – and yes, father, our house does have a library; has had it for years – and learn while I take care of-“

“Harry Potter.” The deadly whisper could mean nothing good, Harry was certain of it. The certainty drummed in his chest with a fast-paced melody of doom.

He didn’t hear his father’s low voice often.

Now, he didn’t want to, either.

“What. Has. Happened. Here,” James forced out through clenched teeth, and Harry flinched, because the barely suppressed rage hurt him, grazed his forced calm and obliterated his wobbly self-esteem, and for a second he imagined himself as that lost little child, once more filled with longing for a meagre scrape of his father’s attentions and affection, yet yielding under the disapproving sneer of his stepmother’s and a smug smirk of his half-sister’s.

 “It was a potion,” Harry explained simply. The truth was his best assistant here. “A searching potion. I lost my vault key a few days back, which gave me the idea. Besides, I wanted to best Snape and invent something mind-boggling, something... unique. There are no searching _potions_ invented yet.”

James’s eyes turned cold.

“Unique...” He tasted the word on his tongue, then spat, as if spewing out something distasteful, “It’s your experiments again! How long are you planning to pursue those silly child’s dreams instead of preparing for the adult life?”

Harry’s lips thinned as he balled his fists and chanced a step forward. This conversation was neither the first nor the last. They had been going at it ever since Harry had expressed his desire to follow in his mother’s footsteps and don on the Unspeakables’ grey robes and sacrifice his private life to the wonders of modern research and furthering the horizons of magic, and stretch the boundaries of wizarding possibilities – all worth it, in the end.

“Explain ‘adult life’ for me, father dearest,” Harry demanded. Occasionally, anger and bloodlust dominated his misted view of his father; betrayal, hurt – those he felt always. “Do you call ‘adult life’ running away to Egypt with a handsome boyfriend, like Lavender has done?”

A vein popped on the man’s forehead as he stormed up to Harry to grab the teen’s collar and hiss, “Your sister deserves your respect-“

Harry blathered on, undaunted.

“-Or, maybe, you prefer to define ‘adult life’ as the life your school mate Peter leads; a quaint existence in the arse of the Ministry – no friends, no wife, no progeny – although that last one is a life-saver; imagine if there were _two_ such Peters roaming the grounds of Wizarding Britain.-“

“Stop it here, Harry,” James growled dangerously, hazel eyes burning into Harry’s emerald green ones, but the flood of the small grudges swamped unstoppable.

“Or is it drinking yourself into oblivion, like _you_ have been doing lately?”

He earned a slap for this.

Harry shut up.

Raising a hand to his cheek – _Merlin, why does it tremble? It has no reason to. Absolutely no reason_ – Harry touched the smooth skin, right the very spot where he could feel the heat spreading.

A slap.

His _father_ had done it.

Harry knew he was not the favoured child, but this was pushing it too much.

“You slapped me,” Harry said dumbly, unable to think of anything else to say. His mouth dried and hung open, and with fingers still lingering at the tender, rosy spot, he stared up at James’s

The man solemnly nodded, his lips just as fine a line as Harry’s own in reluctance or anger: a rare trait the parent and the child shared.

“You deserved it, Harry.” The man threw the words like stones. His voice was hoarse and tired, as was his entire appearance: long hours of drinking alcohol interlinking with equally long missions had worsened James’s condition. “You have no right to say such things about your family and family friends.”

“If you knew me better, you would have noticed that I consider only yourself my family.” Harry’s gaze sharpened as he bit out, “And this might be reconsidered.” The neglected child in him kicked and screamed in hysterics, reflected in the verdant eyes. “After Acacia’s death, you are hardly a human, let alone a parent.”

James exhaled. Slowly, as if about to make a difficult decision.

Harry scoffed and the sneer on his face deepened.

_I feel another punishment coming. I wonder if it’s going to be another errands-boy quest to find him an alcoholic beverage or I should spend hours ‘mending bridges’ with the Weasleatte. Or clean the staircase without magic, which actually sounds more engaging than that last option. You’d think that after all these years a bout of creativity finally drops on him._

“I disown you.”

At first, Harry’s mind couldn’t grasp all the implications, all the meanings the words had.

He blinked. He faltered.

James held out a hand to prevent Harry from speaking, and, for the first time, the teen obliged.

“You’ve let me down with your attitude, Harry,” James started, heaving a sigh. He ran a hand through his hair and seemingly ignored the way Harry’s body tensed. “I- I don’t know how to act around you anymore. You used to be such a darling in your childhood, always playing with Lavender and Ron and Ginny-“

“That was before, father,” Harry whispered. His entire body was stiff, especially the back, and only fingers shook. _Before Ginny started to hit on me. Before Ron lashed out at me. Before you showed your preference of Lavender so clearly it blinded me._

James nodded at his words and went on, “-You looked up to Acacia, too-“

_Of course. She seemed so... motherly. Up until the time she realised I was better than her daughter and started ridicule and humiliate me._

“-and you took pride in visiting the Ministry with me when I had to drop in the Auror Department-“

 _And_ of course _I enjoyed the longing glances you threw every time we passed the Department of Mysteries where mother used to work. It was_ so _exciting hearing you sigh and seeing you glare at me, blaming me for something I had no desire to do and had no control over._

All those thoughts running through his mind clogged his throat.

“-yet now... Now, I don’t feel a connection to you anymore,” James exhaled the words earnestly, the emotions shining over the bags around his eyes and the exhaustion covering every inch of his body.

“And so you have decided to throw me to the wolves, figuratively speaking – or, speaking normal language, kick me out into the streets,” Harry commented scathingly. His fingernails dug into the palms and left half-moon-shaped marks.

James blanched, as if dealt a mortal blow. Then, the expression cleared, and the tired demeanour returned with vengeance and bled into the man’s hunched posture.

“Not in the streets,” he mumbled, escaping Harry’s condemning eyes. “You can live at Sirius’s-“

“Tell this to his boyfriend,” Harry spat as he felt the earlier confusion merge and amplify with rage. “I’d love to see you telling Snape I’m going to disrupt their lovers’ nest. I am bad at poisons. _He_ is not.”

James stepped back. “I- Well- There are other people, too, right? Hermione and Terry Boot, your friends-“

“Small house.”

“Luna Lovegood?”

Harry sneered and, flinging out his wand in irritation, threw a blasting curse on the goo of the failed potion which had crept to his polished boots and had been about to lick them with its acidic tongue.

“Why don’t you propose the Malfoys for a good measure?”

James’s face spotted with red once again, to Harry’s surge of vindictive pleasure, before the hazel gaze steeled with resolve and the hunched back straightened into an ideally level line.

“You will find a way,” he stated in a simple fashion and surveyed the lab. The acidic gunk had gobbled up most of the ingredients lying around and was placidly unmoving, probably satisfied with the amount of destruction it had caused. “You are resourceful, Harry. Aren’t you going to receive an Order of Circe on September, 1st? The reward for the most intelligent and record-breaking students?”

Harry didn’t reply to James’s shy grin, which died down at the unwelcoming reaction.

“So what do you expect me to do? Just take it as an inevitability and flee?” Harry asked in anger. He directed his wand at James. “If you push me, I will never forgive you, father. I’m good at holding grudges. Even Snape envies me sometimes.” He sneered. “Although you are not that far behind him in childishness.”

“You have no other choice. You are too... different. Your experiments, your stand-offish attitude, your animosity...” James shot him a look of reproach. “I don’t know what has gone wrong while I was raising you-“

“ _You_ didn’t raise me,” Harry hissed and cast an exploding spell on the wall just behind James. A huge fragment of it blew up. James fearfully cringed before extinguishing the small fire that the hemline of his Auror robe had caught. “I raised myself. _You_ were never there.”

“And this is another proof why you need a lesson in humility.” James shook his head. “You are unstable, Harry. You lack both respect and common sense. You criticise your sister and Headmaster, spit on the memories of your step-mother, backchat me-“

Harry steeled himself, feeling that a final blow was coming.

“-Lily would have been disappointed in you.”

“Or perhaps she would be disappointed in _you_. I would have loved to hear my mother’s opinion on how you have just disposed of the annoying child by kicking him out into the streets. She would feel _so_ honoured to be your wife.”

With those words, Harry stamped out of the lab.

“Remember: you have two hours to pack up, until I go on the mission and lock you out of the wards!” the warning haunted him.

He couldn’t bear being here anymore.

{ **Design Your Universe** }

Harry had never felt as alone as now. He utterly lacked any available options to choose from; the streets were literally his only refuge now.

As he walked through the crowd in Diagon Alley – did all those people live there? Whenever he visited the place, the mob of wizards was enormous – Harry ran through all the potential candidates to host him.

Terry Boot and Hermione, the Boots’ adopted muggleborn daughter, one of the many child muggleborns who had been taken from their muggle families and adopted into the wizarding ones thanks to Minister Riddle’s orders, were Harry’s closest friends, but lived in a family of bookworms who were perfectly satisfied with a small house and lack of riches.

No, those two were out.

Luna Lovegood?

Indeed, the girl was a semi-friend of his, one of the few people whom his snaps and scowls didn’t deter and who had insisted on socialising with him until Harry’s mind recognised her as a friend.

But they weren’t close enough for her to let him in.

Another one – out.

Regulus and Sirius?

Both lived in a spacious house, but, unfortunately, as an unwanted bonus, came with Snape in tow. Harry honestly couldn’t submit himself to the constant torture of lemony grimaces, cutting insults, crude power games, and the like.

Out of question.

And Harry couldn’t afford even renting a room of his own, not even for the month it took before Hogwarts.

All Harry really wanted was research, but somehow-

He had a hunch it wasn’t going to work out.

What did that leave him with?

{ **Design Your Universe** }

Gringotts Goblin Bank emerged through the haze of Harry’s wondering melancholy.

Harry halted in his footsteps, then shrugged and neared the bank: he needed a new vault key for his empty vault anyway, so why not take care of the business now?

His robe now a one clean one instead of the potions-covered one he had thrown away after the experiment gone awry, his hair somewhat combed and tied into a low ponytail, and the face impassive, Harry walked into Gringotts.

“What can we do for you, sir?” the goblin at the counter spewed out the ‘sir’ as if it were a curse.

Polite smiles didn’t work with goblins, so Harry didn’t bother.

Not that he ever bothered with those anyway.

“I’ve lost the key to my vault,” Harry said bluntly even though his eyes were trained on the neat piles of rubies on the goblin’s scale. If only he could reach his hand... “I wish to remake it.”

The goblin looked up from his heavy office book to eye Harry with mistrust.

“Name? And no funny business, boy,” the creature warned him. A grimace of distaste flickered across Harry’s face.

_Goblins. Always paranoid._

“Harry Potter. The vault is number-“

“The blood test will show what the number of your vault is,” the goblin interrupted with as much disgust as he could manage as he grabbed the scale – the rubies still gleamed attractively – and the office book and tucked them into the space under the counter. “What, did you think we would believe your word?”

“Blood test is pushing it a bit,” Harry said fake-nonchalantly, a frown begging to form on the forehead. “Blood can be used in many rituals. How do I know you are going to use it only for the purpose of making the key?”

If possibly, the goblin’s sneer intensified. The creature’s beady eyes glowered at the human as the mutilated face with a scar running down the cheek screwed up in a grimace.

“Humans. Always with the idiotism. Boy, if you believe we use the blood we are given from wizards – and believe me, there is a plenty of butterfingers like you stumbling in here every day – you think we are staying in this servitude out of pleasure?”

“Who knows, perhaps you are a race of latent masochists?” Harry shot back, fingering his locket.

The goblin stared at him with a startled frown marring his face. When Harry raised an eyebrow and prompted, “Key? Now?”, the creature shook his head and scorned him.

“Not so fast, wizard boy.” He extended a tiny hand with wrinkled skin and blackened fingers and fingernails, the latter twisted in an unnatural form at unnatural angles. “One galleon.”

“What for?” Harry demanded, although his mind supplied him with an answer. Well, needless mulishness was another trait of his; James’s, too. “You will be taking my _blood_. You will be prodding my finger with a needle and drawing blood. Don’t I get some sort of a moral compensation?”

“No gold, no key.”

Harry fulminated the goblin with a glare but didn’t dare talk back this time.

_Greedy old farts. Would it kill you to leave a single galleon to a boy? Obviously._

Whipping a pouch out of his charmed bag that contained his matchstick-sized charmed trunk among other things, Harry fingered the scant coins through the thin fabric and pulled one of them out, handing it to the goblin with a sour frown.

“Here you are.” When Harry saw the goblin inspecting it with masterful hands and spells, he added, “Don’t insult me; it is real. I’m not as suicidal as to trick a goblin.”

“As long as you know this, good for you,” the goblin approved before spinning and, with an irritated jerk, motioning for Harry to follow. “The Blood Chamber, now.”

 _Doesn’t it sound ominous?_ Harry mused, strutting after the creature to the entrance of a tunnel he had never noticed.

Unlike the tunnel with the carts and the vaults deep down, this one hosted doors. Many, many of them. Gold plaques announced the residence of this or that Department or Chamber, and for the first time Harry was hit with a thought that the way the bank functioned was a complete mystery to him and to the rest of the wizarding population.

Was there a Head of all this brilliance, a ruler, or any kind of hierarchy at all? Where did the goblins eat and sleep? Harry had never heard of the existence of some goblin quarters or goblin restaurants and cafeterias... Did they have females? Again, he had never caught sight of a goblin female or a goblin child.

A mystery. Harry loved mysteries.

The short journey they spent in silence.

It was broken with a snap only when they arrived to a door which didn’t differ at all from the others, and the goblin made a sign for Harry to step inside. With only a touch of uncertainty marring his otherwise resolved palette of feelings, Harry did as told.

{ **Design Your Universe** }

The Chamber was empty.

It also didn’t differ much from the vaults – a cavern of a kind, small, cold, and dark, albeit clean, with no animal waste or dirt inside.

The only object of furniture was a wooden chair proudly standing on three legs, with the fourth one half-broken and dangling. Harry’s upper lip curled. He was supposed to sit on _that_?

“What did you expect?” the goblin entered after him and saw the degrading look Harry tossed the chair and the general lack of furniture. “Marble and gold? Humans are so presumptuous. It is a small ritual, for which nothing serves but the parchment and the blood. This room provides privacy only and nothing more.”

“I can believe this,” Harry muttered before demanding, “So? The key? I didn’t pay you the money for talking.”

“This.” The goblin conjured up a piece of parchment and held it out for Harry to clutch. The parchment was empty. “Here you will drop the blood and then there will appear the words pertaining to the heritage you have and all the benefits that come with it. And all the property and vaults you own, of course.”

“So, this is the proof that one owns this or that vault,” Harry needlessly surmised, tapping his chin with a finger. “It helps detect the impostors and anyone who claims to own something they don’t.”

Harry took out his wand and cast a mild cutting hex on his finger, shoving the parchment beneath the blood that trickled down. The red of the drops contrasted beautifully with the yellowish material.

The blood staining the parchment started twisting and expanding, taking on another shape. Moments later Harry found himself staring down at the basic facts of his biography.

_Name: Harry Aliah Potter_

_Mother: Lily Maeve Potter nee Evans (deceased)_

_Father: James Charlus Potter_

_Race: [can’t be read] human_

_Currently Owned Vaults: Harry Potter Vault 375; Evans Vault 522._

_Lordship: heir to the House of Potter, [can’t be read]_

Two things discomfited Harry about this entire matter.

First, why the hell couldn’t half the information be read? Wasn’t goblin magic supposed to be like elfish – alien to wizards but truthful, one which couldn’t be meddled with?

“Seems like someone has toyed with your blood, wizard boy. Didn’t you insist on never being so careless as to give someone a sample? It shouldn’t have been possible otherwise.”

Okay, that one was answered. And Harry’s brain would pick apart the implications later, when this bizarre ordeal was over with.

And secondly...

“Evans vault...” he whispered. The goblin eyed him with a sneer as the teen fiddled with the locket dangling from his neck. Suddenly, Harry drew up and ordered sharply, “Take me to it. I want to see.”

The goblin scoffed. “I want to do many things, too, but you don’t see me wandering around throwing orders, wizard boy.”

The creature didn’t move an inch.

Not in the mood for such games, Harry crouched to be on the same eye-level with the goblin and pitched his voice dangerously low as he spoke, “You will take me there. Right now.” He brought a hand up to the creature’s receding hair and pulled. “If not, I can already tell you that a Sun Amulet and my own skills protect me from whatever you dish out immediately, and my godfather is Lord Black, so it will protect me from anything you throw at me in the long run. Oh, and I’m good with curses.”

“You foolish wizards fear this place called Azkaban,” the goblin stated after a long pause.

A deceptively gentle smile bloomed on Harry’s face.

“My father doesn’t hate me enough to actually send me there. Besides, do you think people would rather believe a sub-human or a prefect with perfect marks and who is about to receive a reward from the Minister himself for trumping half the OWL records?”

{ **Design Your Universe** }

“Vault 522,” the goblin announced in a monotone.

Harry nodded and stepped out of the cart, for the first time feeling hesitance embrace him. When he was paces away from the door, he halted and raised his hand to touch the necklace. Its smooth, cool surface gave him energy and power to amble forward.

Harry twisted the key and pushed the door open.

The vault was dark.

Even darker than the Blood Chamber before. No torches, no any other sources of light.

A shudder rushed up Harry’s spine.

His eyes swept through the vault and caught sight of the only object: a moderately large wooden box in the very centre of the room. Harry marched up to it and dropped on the cold stony ground to reverently bring his shaking hands to touch the coarse surface of the box.

Cradling it to his chest for a second, as if feeling memories and warmth and love speeding up into him from the plain object, Harry was forced to break his reverie at the dry deriding cough of the goblin behind.

The spell shattered.

“Leave me,” he ordered coldly.

“Gladly.” The smile the creature flashed was full of teeth. “We come check the place for thieves once every twenty years. I hope we won’t forget this corner of bank this time.”

“You know what I mean and must obey.” There was an oath binding goblins to their customers, and Harry used it.

“Unfortunately,” the goblin spat and strode out of the vault, closing the door behind him. Harry was alone.

Slowly and carefully, Harry set the box on the ground and lifted the lid.

He did a double-take.

_Well, this certainly isn’t what I was expecting._

Lily had been an Unspeakable fiercely devoted to her job, so Harry had expected to find a sheaf of parchment and muggle paper, all filled with notes on various inventions, instructions on potions-making and spell creation, tables of properties, maybe even hints on the whereabouts of hidden treasures-

Never this.

The array of objects was as diverse as they came.

The largest of them was a leather-bound journal. When Harry cautiously untied the coarse bows, he opened the journal and flipped through the pages, but to his bitter disappointment, the entire thing was covered with a string of incomprehensible scribbles in a language Harry hadn’t heard of.

_Should research this one. These are not runes, at least, so nothing nasty like blindness or mutilation will happen if I read it._

Harry set it back into the box and pulled out the next object: a... cup. Yes, a wooden cup.

Harry stared at it for a second. The cup stared back.

_Perhaps mother needed it for a DoM experiment?_

Then, out of the corner of his eye, while placing the cup into the box, he spied an elegant velvet box of rich blue colour.

He opened it and found a set of earrings made of something looking suspiciously like diamonds. They sparkled at him.

Harry inspected the jewellery.

_Now, at which price do I sell them?_

The recollection that these had once belonged to his mother tore Harry out of the clutches of his stupor and the teen shook his head in self-disgust, strands of black hair falling into his face.

_I can’t. I will wear them as a remembrance of her. They are going to make a nice set with the locket, hmm? Besides, they shine prettily..._

And speaking of shiny things...

Harry’s gaze fell on a ritual knife with a ragged blade. It was very simple, with a black handle, and the teen had seen this sort of knives in a book on obscure arts he had snitched in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library.

Harry shied away from touching it.

He had read that if a ritual knife didn’t accept you as its master, then the person who dared place their hands on it would be butchered into pieces. Magic didn’t take kindly to thieves, real or presumed.

The teen diverted his attention to the other objects in the box but was disappointed: a few shards of glass, a bottle of indigo mist, five rainbow-coloured leaves which somewhat resembled maple ones, a full bottle of Felix Felicis, two bottles of unknown content (one of them mostly empty and the other of a rich red colour), a diamond, and an amethyst.

No money, no truly personal things like photos or letters or even pieces of parchments with Lily’s handwriting on them...

And yet, Harry’s day had brightened, his findings of today chasing away the uncertainty and fear of the future, energising him, lending him the force to move on and seek ways out of the situation his father had thrown him in.

Those were the things that had once belonged to his mother, however puzzling they were.

_But... What do I do next?_


	2. DROWNING IN A SEA OF UNCERTAINTIES

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before I forget: this story won’t concentrate on a super magically powerful Harry. True, he’ll be more than average in this regard, and have a special ability or two, but this story features an Inventor!Harry mostly. Yes, this means that he’s more likely to use potions, trinkets, and magical stones and talismans of his own creation rather than simply hurl a burst of magic at a nuisance and be done with it. I wanted to throw that in before you get to the middle of the story and realise that he isn’t as magically powerful as some other characters, including Tom and Dumbledore. His strengths lie in a different field.

It was a common piece of knowledge that when in doubt, turn to Hermione Granger.

"If idiocy were a lethal decease, you would have been six feet under in your early childhood,” Hermione said mildly at his recount of the previous events. A delicate tea cup rested in her fingers as she took a calm sip.

Harry gaped at her.

“He disowned me!” he insisted at the same time as Terry Boot, Hermione’s adopted brother, entered the lounge with a tray full of drool-worthy snacks on it. “My own father-!”

“I don’t believe he did,” Hermione interrupted Harry’s starting spiel and frowned, setting the china tea cup on her lap. “Just think about it, Harry: it was a spontaneous decision brought on by a lack of sleep – the man had spent _days_ hunting ‘Dark’ wizards who turned out to be teenagers experimenting with compulsion charms! – and grief for his late wife- _Second_ dead wife, if I must remind you.”

“I agree on this one, mate,” Terry put in his five cents as he dropped next to Harry on the modest couch of the Boots’ dwelling. “If you return to him, and he’s already thought ‘bout it and all, he’s probably going to forgive you.”

“I haven’t done anything to forgive.” Harry’s emerald-green eyes flashed with a surge of anger. His eyes flickered to Terry, who was scratching the back of his head in hesitance, before stopping on Hermione, who was watching him as unfazed as ever, with only perhaps a tint of disapproval swimming in her brown eyes.

He slouched and groaned.

Hermione and Terry weren’t siblings in the common sense of world, yet their constant mutual agreement indicated otherwise.

When Tom Riddle had been appointed Minister, the man’s first decree had been to amplify the gap between the muggle world and the wizarding one – and can you find a better way to do it than to steal muggleborns at the first hint of accidental magic to later force them into halfblooded and pureblooded families?

Hermione had been one of the first children to go through this procedure, thus growing up in the Boot household alongside Terry. At the age of fifteen, she had been given a choice whether to keep her surname as ‘Boot’ or change it to her muggle one, and she had chosen the latter, in respect to the biological parents she had never seen but who had given birth to her.

Not that they remembered. Obliviators never slacked off: their proficiency was on the tip of the tongue of even a hag living in a wild forest and-

Harry forced his thoughts to return to the matters of _his_ life.

 _His_ father...

From the beginning of his childhood, James’s unforgiving glares weighed down on Harry, on the teen’s conscience and on his view of the world. Lily, Harry’s mother, had died giving birth to him, and in the man’s mind that immediately turned Harry into an unwitting murderer from the first breath he had drawn.

Aggravating, that was.

His stepmother never helped matters either – the late Acacia Brown, mother of Lavender, had been an envious wench with no other purpose in life than nag, and preach, and blame, and criticise. After her unexpected death – rather tragic, Harry supposed, strangling his slight guilt – he had felt no claws of remorse tearing at him, no tears gathered in the corners of his eyes, no grief raking his body.

Not unexpected, considering what he had done.

And James...

“I will not return,” Harry found himself saying through a haze of remembrance. Terry shot him a sharp look and Hermione cocked her head, urging him to elaborate. “Whatever you say, I won’t go back until he _begs_ me. Yes, he’s going through a crappy patch in life now, yes, I made it worse by destroying half the house with my experiments, yes, I should be patient, and understanding, and kind- But he disowned me. Even if in words only, without making it legal, these are still his words and he uttered them.” Harry lifted his chin. “And don’t you try to dissuade me, Hermione.”

Hermione regarded him for a long moment, her intelligent brown eyes gleaming, weighing, and calculating. Harry only scowled at the stare. He hated it, this kind of look.

His attention was snapped by Terry, who laid a reassuring hand on his lap and tossed him a small grin.

“We won’t,” he calmed Harry down; his voice soothing and low in quality, lulling Harry with its velvety notes. “At least-“ Here Terry shot Hermione a pointed look. “- _I_ won’t. You’re better off with Luna’s Snorkacks rather than with this father of yours.”

“Boys!” Hermione exclaimed in irritation before huffing. “This is a serious discussion. Surely you can hold off for a moment and not bring any of those silly creatures Lovegood is always rambling on and on about?”

Particles of ice swam in Harry’s eyes and made them stand out on his face even more, pools of emerald silent fury against the pale complexion. He leaned his head in a dangerous tilt, and when he spoke, the voice was bereft of any warmth, “She is my friend, too, Hermione.”

Softly. He always spoke softly when annoyed or aggravated.

Hermione flinched, as if from a slap, her body suddenly shrinking and becoming small and frail, which reminded Harry sharply that she was his friend and he should _really_ tone down on the frost at times.

But he didn’t apologise. His words rang true; suffering had merged with Luna’s life in her early years, and if he could diminish the burden she carried – he would do it.

Protection often meant more than flinging spells at bullies, after all.

“But where will you go?” Hermione pleaded at last and leaned forward. Her bushy hair fell on her face and shielded one half of it before she blew the annoying strands away. “You can stay with us, I suppose, but our parents-“

“I’ll think of something,” Harry muttered. Indeed, he had had some time to think it over, and the premonition twined with a sick sort of anticipation at the step he was about to take.

Terry clasped his shoulder in a tight grip. Hermione gasped and covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes suddenly alight with realisation.

“I know this look.” She regained her bearings and straightened before her glare stabbed Harry like a sharp dagger would. “Harry Potter, I demand you tell me immediately of whatever plan is running through this mind of yours!”

As Harry raised an unimpressed eyebrow. To his side Terry snorted into his fist which concealed the entirety of his tanned face sans the glinting brown eyes – a trait the ‘siblings’ shared.

“Careful, ‘Mione. Your inner dictator is seeping through,” Terry warned jokingly and dodged Hermione’s threatening fist.

“So?” the girl urged, in that deadly tone of voice that threw Malfoy off his high horse and made flowers wither in the pots.

“Please, Hermione, you have never mothered me, so let’s not stoop to this now either, all right?” Harry asked as he pulled his face into a disgusted grimace before it cleared, and he continued after a sigh escaped his lips. “About my plan... I must warn you: it’s hazy at best. Uncertain. Foggy. Whatever other adjectives you can think of- Well, anyway... You know my intelligence is decent-“

“Hello, Captain Obvious,” Terry muttered and popped a sweet from the tray on the table into his eager mouth. He lifted a book from a coffee table nearby and stuck his nose in, although Harry knew that one half of him listened and memorised.

“Sneaking in to watch muggle contraptions again?” Harry asked at the term, without real interest but hoping to distract Hermione. His plan resembled Holland cheese at the moment, holes and all. Embarrassment coursed through his body at the idea of introducing it, in its newborn stage, to Hermione’s brilliant mind and Terry’s critical views, and then endure the scepticism and mocks.

“It’s illegal,” Hermione automatically supplied. _Oh. So, distraction tactics work sometimes._

“Who cares?” Terry shrugged. “Every invention, every event, even muggle ones, make up our world’s history. And living history is no less exciting than experiencing it in books, archives, and whatever else.”

“Your obsession with history will be your downfall,” Harry reprimanded mildly.

“Harry,” Hermione scolded, shooting him a warning look. Harry ignored the twinge of resentment that spiked in him. Yes, he remembered. “ _You_ of all people have no right to speak of obsessions.”

Her voice cut through the peaceful atmosphere and split it in two, violently, quickly.

Harry gritted his teeth and willed himself to let it lie, like he had done for many years. There were instances when friends only irritated him, and during such moments he imagined himself a potion bubbling in the cauldron: seething, boiling, but held under the careful surveillance and controlling hands of a master, and thus still confined in the cauldron. And the temptation to slip out was always strong, but every time Harry would brace himself and convince his mind that his friends hadn’t done anything to deserve his anger, however temporary.

Besides, this time, if what Harry was thinking about would come to pass... He would miss his friends. For a long while.

“So? Do you want to hear me out or not?” Who cared if his voice came out too snarky and sharp, diverting Terry’s attention from his history tome and sending shivers run down Hermione’s spine?

Darkness mixed with danger under the cold surface of his face, the concoction too forceful and strong to remain cramped at all times, and sometimes Harry’s _other_ side bled through. Times like those, everyone knew to keep their distance. There was a reason Harry’s friends were almost nonexistent.

“I- Sorry,” Hermione mumbled and forced her eyes away from him. _Good. She knows the staring annoys me but continues doing it all the same._

Harry sighed. It had long since become his favourite pastime. Oh, along with casually scheming Snape’s murder, and Lavender’s ‘accidents’,  and James’s misfortunes at work, and ways to ward off Ginny Weasley. Not to mention contemplating the height of cruelty he had committed recently, which he didn’t deem a cruelty at all... but _that_ was a lifestyle.

“ _I_ should be sorry for losing control of my emotions like this. Again.” Terry returned to the book while Hermione set aside the cup with the tea gone cold long ago, and waited patiently for him to reveal his course of actions. “As I was saying, Hogwarts is starting to become tedious anyway. The classes are hardly challenging; we can easily learn all this stuff from books in our free time, not to mention that we can’t practice magic outside of classrooms, which leaves us with plenty of theory only. They should think about raising their standards.”

“Oh, Harry.” Hermione shook her head and the brown hair rippled over her shoulders. “There are few people who breeze through the curriculum. If you haven’t noticed, although I have no trouble, and _you_ even less so, Seamus Finnigan still burns down every object we have to spell in Charms, Neville still blows up his cauldron in every Potions class – Snape was livid that one time when his robes caught fire, too – and Ron Weasley still can’t fathom that when Professor McGonagall says something, she means it, and no amount of stubbornness can make him into an Animagus without special lessons.”

“And we don’t even get started on ‘Puffs,” chimed in Terry, looking up from his book for a second before returning to it. Hermione solemnly nodded in agreement.

“I understand what you are trying to say, Harry, but you can’t leave Hogwarts!”

“Why?” Harry smiled. His smile was moonlight-cold, distant yet with a detached beauty shining through.

Make them understand...

He had imagined the chore to be easier.

Hermione’s eyes darted to a side and back to him in a wary, weary dance.

“What about the award? Order of Circe, First Class, Harry! The only award higher would be the Order of Merlin but this one is given for heroics, not for studiousness and diligence.”

Harry waved it off, crossing his legs. “It’s given to me simply for a potion I invented. I only have to be at the ministerial ball scheduled for the 25th and receive it, but this doesn’t tie me to Hogwarts.” He sent her a sharp look. “I am free to leave whenever I wish.”

“And what about the person who awards the Orders?” Hermione insisted and pushed a lock of hair away from her face with an impatient, irritated gesture. “The Minister, Harry! Tom I-am-a-stuck-up-bastard Riddle himself is going to hand it to you!”

“And? Again, it doesn’t change anything. True, this award goes to me because of something I did in Hogwarts, but I can receive it and then go on my merry way to another school.” Harry paused before his lips quirked. “Senex Academia, for instance.”

Hermione’s eyes widened and looked ready to jump out of their sockets, while Terry dropped the book he had been holding to stare at Harry, mouth hung open.

Harry faced it all with a calm expression.

Finally, Hermione took a deep breath and loudly exhaled through her mouth, her eyes closing for a fleeting moment. When she opened them again, her gaze dug into Harry with the force of hundreds of enchanted needles.

“It is a legend,” she said firmly, with conviction lacing every word she spoke. At this, Harry inclined his head and waited for her to expand. “A mere myth, Harry. If you believe in this, you might as well believe that the land Merlin discovered, the magical island Avalon, actually exists.”

“Do you doubt Merlin?” Harry asked innocently, ignoring the frustration brewing inside him. 

“I- Harry, not every piece of his biography is actually true.” Hermione sniffed and crossed her arms over her chest. She resembled a goose with her bushy hair, puffed out chest, and pursed lips. “The idea is ridiculous. I thought you’d choose a school like Durmstrang or Beauxbatons-“

“Neither is good enough,” Harry interrupted sharply. “Years back, before Riddle became Minister – perhaps these schools would have trumped Hogwarts. But should I remind you of all the innovations he has introduced in the educational system? The man is a genius. Although old Dumbledore-“

“Professor Dumbledore.”

“-is still the Headmaster, and thus Hogwarts isn’t Riddle’s turf-“

“An underestimation,” Terry piped in. “The old fossil can still pack a political punch. If Riddle mucks about in Hogwarts of all places, poor bloke’ll be ripped apart, Minister or not.”

“-you know that even the old codger couldn’t deflect some of the adjournments in the curriculum.” Harry stomped down the exasperation that was building up in him. “For instance, years ago there was this subject called ‘Muggle Studies’, which has transformed into Wizarding Studies. Then, the level of the material has boosted up, too. If back in the ‘60s few Hogwarts alumni won international tournaments, now the numbers are steadily increasing. Not least because more useful material is introduced, and some of the subjects previously optional – like the Care of Magical Creatures – became compulsory, while Astronomy, on the other hand, moved to being an optional subject like Arithmancy.”

“Exactly.” Hermione nodded and her lips stretched into a hopeful smile. “See? There is no need to leave Hogwarts at all, Harry. You will-“

“Do you listen to me at all?” Harry bit out, exasperated with her insistence and the unwillingness to back down, for Merlin’s sake. “It’s still not ideal. From what I’ve heard of Senex Academia, the standards there are even higher. The library is larger.” His lips twisted into a smirk.  “The students are more dangerous and thrilling to be around, too. No more whining Daddy-wannabes like Malfoy or little runty stalkers like Creepy.”

“Creevy,” Hermione corrected him with a twitch of her lips. A second later she replaced it with a scowl. “You adrenaline junkie! Honestly, is danger all you ever think about?”

“I’m adventurous at heart,” Harry purred and his body language spoke of tales of nightly escapades and pleasant midnight duels. “Hogwarts students usually have all the grace of a waltzing dragon. They can hardly beat me at intelligence and I would rather train ‘till I’m blue than let them thrash me in a duel.”

“How are you planning to find this Avalon legend anyway?” Hermione changed the subject. She tugged at her skirt, as if uninterested and already deeming Harry a lost cause. “And found out about Senex Academia.”

Oh, wouldn’t they be surprised to know?

Harry tilted his head and felt his lips stretch in a mocking smile.

“Binns.”

Hermione blinked. Terry looked up from his book and blinked.

“Umm... Sorry to break it to you, Harry, but-“

“Oh, it’s not like he stopped me in the hallway and invited me to a pleasant chat over some ghostly tea and crumpets, all the while recounting his old days.” Harry snorted at the image of the owlish dead professor doing exactly that. “I came across the Academia in a book during his lesson, so I simply stayed behind and asked him whether he could share titbits of knowledge concerning this... discovery of mine. He told me.”

It had been so simple to find trails leading to the legendary Avalon... Then again, Harry supposed the school didn’t truly hide, because from Binns’s tales, they had more than enough resources to vanish off the face of the earth completely.

Yet, they hadn’t done it.

Wasn’t it a sign then? Some sort of destiny?

“All right,” Hermione relented at last. “Say I believe you. Say this Avalon and this Senex Academia do exist. How are you going to get there?”

Harry couldn’t hold back an excited grin. “Goblins.”

His friends pulled disbelieving grimaces. For the umpteenth time, Harry repressed a surge of anger at their continuous disbelief in him and his reasoning. Would it hurt to be supportive? He was trying to pile up as much optimism as he could muster, and they were steadily demolishing every wall of determination and courage he built.

“Binns said creatures have a stronger tie to Avalon than humans,” Harry explained despite it. His friends deserved an explanation. “And for a few shiny sickles, goblins can do almost anything. Binns explained that you can ask for a portkey in Gringotts and then it’ll whisk you off to the island. There, it’s fairly easy to find the Academia. It doesn’t do owl-mail, unfortunately, so you have to talk with the administration in person.”

“And when are you going to visit the place?” Hermione asked suspiciously.

“Today,” Harry replied silkily and rose from the comfy sofa. 

{ **Design Your Universe** }

Harry decided to treat himself to Fortescue’s best ice cream before plunging into the danger that was his first outing to Avalon – hopefully not his last.

He watched wizards pass by, some rushing, some ambling, others strutting like they owned the place. The colours of their summer robes all merged into a kaleidoscope of styles and garments, all unique and diverse, each ensemble a reflection not only of a wizard’s or witch’s sense of style but their personality and inner world as well.

Their hairstyles and accessories all matched, too, and created a semblance of a daytime carnival ramping about in the hidden street of London: here came a gentlemanly old wizard with a mad-hatter hat and bright yellow robes covered with splotches of blue. Not far from him, a middle-aged woman stormed out of the apothecary, ranting, with a cat perched upon her head and a purely bronze cane clutched tightly in her fist as she swung it back and forth, bickering with a friend about the insanely high prices of basilisk bits. A group of children stood nearby, all giggling and pointing at the floating feathers in front of the wizarding stationery...

Although he had been born in this world, he still couldn’t shake off this sensation of _magic_ washing over him every time he visited Hogsmeade or Diagon, or any other magical gathering. It was fantastic. Magnificent. Alluring.

And yet, today, the allure was lost on him, with his mind being weighed down by a myriad of things, each of which demanded careful attention and consideration, and hours’ worth of contemplation. All thoughts tumbled around his mind, all of them vanishing when he attempted to reach for one.

One of Hermione’s phrases turned over and over in his head, sticking in his mind and refusing to leave.

 _“_ You _of all people have no right to speak of obsessions.”_

Truth hurt, always.

And the truth was that Harry obsessed over Tom Riddle.

Harry allowed the pleasant din of the alley and the parlour whirl him away and into his misty childhood memories, the times when that delicate situation of his sprouted.

{ **Design Your Universe** }

_“I don’t like them!” Harry proclaimed loudly as he tugged at the sleeves of his new dress robes. They were constricting and dull and he didn’t like the colour. Black. Why did his stepmom always make him wear black? If she was a weird mix of a fairy tale hag and goth at heart, it didn’t give her the right to influence him, too!_

_Acacia Brown, a woman of many talents that didn’t include mothering a child, spared the tiny boy standing on a stool a sharp glance._

_James tried to be diplomatic._

_“Harry, dear, umm... It’s a funeral. I understand you like green and hate black, but-“_

_“She_ always _makes me do things I don’t want to, Daddy,” Harry complained and puffed out his lower lip. “And you are beginning to act like her, too. Always listening to her and doing as she tells. You are a toe-rag, Daddy.”_

_Frost entered James’s hazel eyes and he dug his fists into his sides, assuming the pose of a sugar-bowl. Harry bit his lips, realising he had slipped and annoyed his father somehow – which happened frequently, mind you, but still didn’t bring any enjoyable consequences – and turned his head away. His eyes caught Madame Malkin’s sympathetic look._

_“Now, young man, this is no way to talk to your father,” the Auror hissed, while Harry glimpsed Acacia’s satisfied smirk. “Take a leaf out of Lavender’s book for once and behave.”_

_Harry whipped his head to his half-sister, curly-haired and blue-eyed, as she bubbled happily on the stool next to his and let Madame Malkin’s assistant adjust her newly made robes._

_Bright pink robes. Not black._

_Tears stung in Harry’s, but he forced them down, down, down, like he had been doing his entire life._

_It was unfair._

_Beyond unfair._

_Not that he wanted_ pink _robes, of course._

 _Why couldn’t his father announce_ him _as an example for once, not his sister? Instead, James always retained that vaguely disgusted and majorly indifferent look while talking to Harry, as if preserving the sanctity of warm smiles and laughs and bear hugs for Harry’s half-sister._

_Out of the two, people always seemed to choose her._

_The doors opened with the jingle of the bell. The Potter family all as one gave in to their curiosity and glimpsed the man who just entered._

_Tall, elegant, with high cheekbones and reddish brown eyes, he created a picture of perfection, and the only mar on his countenance was the cold, aloof expression. Harry distinctly remembered seeing him in the Prophet, but the name must have escaped him – Harry liked pictures, not text, and only his Potions book was an exception, simply because it allowed him to experiment as well._

_“Minister Riddle,” James grunted somewhat forcefully before bowing his head in greeting._

_Acacia pressed her lips and repeated the motion, and Harry stared starry-eyed at the man: anyone who could make her bow was his idol._

_“James Potter.” The man’s – Riddle’s – voice was a pleasant baritone that sent shivers down Harry’s spine. The boy drew his robes tighter around him. “I suppose even tramps need to dress up sometimes.”_

_James’s hand sneaked to his pocket, where Harry knew his father held his wand._

_Not good. Harry’s father was strong, and the boy didn’t want that man to get hurt._

_“What is your name?” he called out from the stool. Riddle’s gaze shifted to him, heavy, and Harry barely resisted the urge to squirm or duck his head._

_“Harry!” James reprimanded, his eye flashing with evident displeasure._

_Riddle shot him a partly amused, partly condescending look, advancing forwards, just where a suddenly nervous Harry stood._

_“Never cared enough to educate your son about the strong figures of the contemporary world?” he mused aloud and tapped his chin with a thin finger. A golden ring perched upon it drew Harry’s attention immediately. It was glinting beautifully, and the black stone somehow... called out to him._

_Harry squelched the urge to step down from the stool and take it in his hands._

_“Harry is still young. He has his entire life ahead of him,” James returned with a sharp look in Madame Malkin’s direction. Wordlessly understanding him, the woman moved to take the robes off Harry and Lavender and stick them into a shopping bag. “And the influential people of today have the tendency to become the nobodies of tomorrow.”_

_Riddle didn’t move a brow. “Indeed. It is especially more likely to happen when the influential person in question can’t hold their tongue and keep from arguing with superiors. If, say – all hypothetically, of course – Head Auror backchatted the Minister... What do you suppose would happen?”_

_The man flicked the invisible lint off his impeccable black robe, not even glancing at any of them._

_James stood there gaping like a fish before a semblance of control returned to him._

_“I wouldn’t know, would I?”_

_“If you keep your temper and juvenile grudges in check, Mr. Potter, you wouldn’t.” Abruptly, the man’s eyes found Harry’s, and the boy would have taken a step back if his position allowed him.“I advise you take care of your progeny, Mr. Potter. Some of them can turn out better than you think.” Lips stretched into a wide smirk. “Better than anyone would think.”_

_Harry’s small heart drummed in his ears, flapped in his chest, and acted so loud and so alive the boy thought it would escape his body._

_Someone believed in him._

_The first person to not even glance at his half-sister but at him, Harry._

{ **Design Your Universe** }

“Your ice cream is melting, sir,” came a kind elderly voice. Harry looked up to see Florean Fortescue smiling down at him. He forced a smile onto his face.

“Thank you. Just got lost in thoughts.”

The elderly wizard winked at him. “It happens, dear. If you want to, another ice-cream will be on me.”

“Thank you,” Harry repeated and shook his head, just as the smile on his face grew more natural at the offer. “Have to go now. Your wonderful treat has kept me here for too long already.”

After paying, Harry flounced out of the parlour and weaved through the crowd of wizards in the direction of Gringotts, which loomed over the alley in its white-marbled magnificence. The goblins at the entrance were as unfriendly as ever and shot him an evil eye when he asked to see the goblin responsible for the transportation to Avalon, just like Binns had told him to do.

As it turned out, his luck was at it again: the goblin assigned was the same goblin whose head Harry had grabbed in a fit of rage the other day. Or, at least, seemed to be the same: Harry never really cared to discern the faint differences between goblins.

“Mr. Potter.” The creature inclined its head in a semi-greeting. “To what do I owe the dubious pleasure?”

“A portkey to Avalon,” Harry said shortly, reaching his bag where he kept his matchstick-sized trunk and pouch with all the remaining money. “Seven galleons, right?”

Strangely, the goblin only smirked. No reluctance to carry out the order, no malicious vibes.

Harry’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“That would be it, Mr. Potter.”

Harry handed the money, which the little creature grabbed in a second and pocketed in his red uniform immediately. The grin that stretched on his face was frightening: toothy and shark-like.

“I hope you enjoy your journey.”

These words were uttered, and a whirlwind of colours and sensations, all different, from tingling to nauseating to painful, swept him away to terra incognita.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just before any of you makes assumptions, no, Harry won’t cater to Tom in this fic. Their relationship will be rather rocky, and no amount of obsession on Harry’s part can change that.


	3. Who Says Welcomes Must Be Warm?

_I’m going to kill that blundering creature!_ Harry’s mind hissed when the unwelcome portkey-induced whirlwind catapulted him onto a stony surface. He fell in a heap at the abrupt landing. Apparition and portkeys hardly startled Harry anymore, because he often covered distances with those two tools, but visiting Avalon apparently meant breaching extra wards or some other sort of security. The process had felt longer and much more unpleasant even than usual.

As he fell, a particularly sharp stone nicked the side of Harry’s hand. The teen’s mood darkened as he mentally cursed the lights out of Gringotts and goblins. Wiping the tiny droplets of blood from his hand, he stood up and surveyed the panorama-

Only to stagger back in bedazzlement and fright.

His eyes met not the ordinary landscape of a typical English street. No, no, _no_. The portkey led to a vast, mirage-like square crowded with numerous apparition points and mingling... people. Except that you couldn’t call a sneering bluish thing with verdant hair a person. And the same went for a weird creature with sharp claws and a tail that peeked out from the hem of a short dress, or a cackling group of werewolves, or a couple of strolling vampires sipping a gleaming burgundy liquid through the straws of their high glasses

Magical creatures, most of them.

Harry sliced the horde with a critical look, judging and calculating, fishing both for oddities and for the patterns of general behaviour adopted there, the sort he must copy to fit in. Some creatures pushed through the crowd to a crooked iron gate that loomed over their heads, some sneaked about with mischievous expressions on their faces, while others carefully lurked around obviously wealthy people. Harry’s sharp eye caught sight of a fair amount of hands slipping into pockets that weren’t their owners’; most of the pick-pocketing hands returned with no catch grasped in them.

Harry buried his shrunken bag and wallet deeper in his own pocket. Although he had charmed them both against thievery, he knew too little of Avalon and the abilities of its inhabitants. Harry considered his spellwork superb, but not so much as to test it against the folk here.

He jolted when something prodded him in the back. Angrily and impatiently.

With a bewildered expression dancing across his face, Harry whirled around to blink at an annoyed chap. An annoyed chap with amber eyes and a snarl on his face revealing _very_ sharp teeth.

Calmly, because you don’t fuck with angry werewolves, Harry stepped aside to let the other go his way. The werewolf sneered and spouted a steady onslaught of gibberish that had Harry frowning, after which he stormed off in hurry to do whatever business called for him so urgently.

 _Does the bloke have a speech impediment?_ The thought coursed through Harry’s mind as he stared at the retreating back. He started moving, wary of the entities around him, keeping up a mask of nonchalance and strength. Just to satisfy a fleeting curiosity, he strained his ears to listen in to a private conversation shared by the vampires with the high glasses and straws-

His heart thumped. His body chilled.

The same gibberish greeted his ears.

Panic clawed at him, but Harry refused to succumb to it.

He didn’t have any proof that _everyone_ talked that way in Avalon. Maybe it was a silencing ward- _no, those would have simply muted all sound, not letting anything in, not letting anything out._ Harry’s mind reeled. _A privacy ward? Then again, it simply smudges the sounds, thus creating this effect, but here I can clearly hear each word and each sound, decipher it and discern it; it’s not like that werewolf put up a privacy ward earlier.  I would have felt it-_

He drifted closer to a few more people who didn’t have the glimmer of silencing wards floating about. Sometimes he didn’t have to struggle to hear them: a bunch of werewolves nearby shouted loud enough, and a flock of normal-looking girls with red markings all over their bodies saw nothing wrong with raucous laughs and yells and teasing either.

Desperation wrapped itself around him like a mantle as Harry realised that he recognised no word of their speech. He mechanically advanced forward towards the iron gate.

Harry’s imagination visualised more and more scenarios of how bad things would get if he were really stuck there without a means of escape and no language skills to speak of. An interpreter? A nice solution, but not for him. He didn’t know where to search, where to start, what to pay with or how to communicate with the interpreter.

And that left somehow finding the way to Senex all by himself. No signs. No asking strangers. No handy tourist guides for humans.

Harry inhaled. Exhaled. He repeated the process several times, again and again, until panic loosened its grasp on him and carefully retreated to the darkest corner of his mind that Occlumency shielded. The panic shared its living space with terror, guilt, jealousy, hatred and all and other negative emotions that barred his way up the climbing ladder.

Now that the cool returned, some part of that search excited him. He regarded it as a small adventure to take his mind off his trouble, except that at the end of that adventure awaited the promise of reward and something of a solution, so Harry satisfied his more practical part with the guaranteed result and usefulness of the endeavour. Other humans travelled to Avalon, too, and probably found Senex by themselves. Harry refused to be inferior to them.

Making up his mind and trusting his instincts, Harry proceeded out of the square that hosted all the apparition points and into the great unknown.

Could he hope that a sign would point him to a right direction?

{ **Design Your Universe** }

He was quietly reading a tome on Ancient Runes when a familiar jolt of magic tugged at his core. His eyes widened. _They_ had trained him to recognise that particular alluring pull ever since he had been a small child, drilling into him the instructions and the course of actions he needed to take to satisfy _them_.

Slowly, his lips pulled apart to reveal fanged teeth, just as anticipation trilled in his ears.

Ah, he couldn’t wait!

The man got to his feet in a single fluid motion, putting aside the dog-eared book that no longer fulfilled any purpose. Runes were his expertise. There was nothing new in the book, nothing more to learn.

Walking up to the nearest mirror, he carefully examined the reflection that stared back at him, the same predatory smirk and a dangerous gleam in its eyes. The chances of him meeting that brat today of all days? Pfft. _Null_ , he snorted. Still, a little bit of care never hurt.

He smoothed out the wrinkles on his robes, tucked a stray lock of black hair behind his ear, and absently cast a charm to liven up the sickly pallor of his skin. Did his fangs glisten enough? He should probably bathe them in some blood later – unnecessary but worked wonders for the white colour. And the shine, don’t forget the shine. Wouldn’t want to make a poor impression on the brat.

A twinge of irritation left a sour taste in the man’s mouth.

...Why did that brat drop on him all of a sudden? He had to make connections and to mingle, further his goals and broaden the horizons of his knowledge, not play a babysitter to a sacrificial lamb! What was the point of caring for the boy when they would off him in the end? Wouldn’t it be more merciful if _they_ killed him quickly and without unnecessary betrayals?

He frowned at his own thoughts. He wasn’t going soft. He surely was not.

The brat arrived earlier than that woman had predicted. Much earlier. But he never looked a gift horse in the mouth when it presented him with such a perfect opportunity to finish this whole business sooner. His mistake, maybe, but he didn’t invest himself in this whole enterprise as much as the others. Probably because he didn’t need _their_ aid in the end. Some more political clout, some help in securing his inheritance... Without any regrets or guilt, he weaselled out of the consequences as if slicing through butter – with ease and a mocking laugh, no assistance required.

And when he completed _his_ part of the deal-

A laugh, exhilarated and manic, bubbled out of his throat.

-he would break all ties with _them_ , reap the reward, and enjoy the benefits of leadership over his kin.

Wiping off all traces of his amusement and anticipation from his face, he straightened and strode out of his room. Perhaps he would meet the brat today, after all.

{ **Design Your Universe** }

It looked like he _could_ hope, but all in vain.

Sense of adventure didn’t work with Harry. The Gryffindorish rubbish his father so often indulged in just wasn’t Harry’s thing, and the teen drifted through the winding main street in no particular mood but a rising desire to kill someone. Preferably that Gringotts goblin, whatever that thing’s name was. Occasionally, Harry spitefully considered creating a political movement fighting for human banks and the obliteration of the goblin ones-

Until his brain mockingly reminded that goblins _knew_ their business. Better than any human did. Harry’s mood soured further.

Of course, his _somewhat_ sulky frame of mind didn’t prevent him from noting down the breathtaking architecture and the vast selection of goods seen through the charmed window displays; the motley attires and their exotic owners; the variety of creatures and assortment of pets, as well as the lack of trees; the unusual stone of which everything in the exhaustingly long street was made of – marble-like and creamy in colour, but with a fluid texture and flowing like water; or the tame pegasi and thestrals carrying their riders, who trotted placidly between throngs of people. No one batted an eyelash.

The sophisticated beauty of the street overwhelmed Harry. He valued and appreciated splendour and magnificence, and the overall style of the buildings amazed him: pinnacles, and spires, and ribbed vaults arched upwards; traceried windows of the higher floors reflected light; and high columns clustered the balconies and framed the windows. The entire image created a feel of exquisite taste and ghost-like light.

All in all, the place possessed all the finesse of Gringotts multiplied by hundreds.

He didn’t venture in the shops, although he gazed longingly at the showcased trinkets. Even without knowing the language, when he glimpsed the price tags, he blanched and dread settled in: some knickknacks would dent _Malfoy’s_ fortune. Not that hard to believe when the shops offered bejewelled crowns, photo frames of powdered dragon tooth, wigs of unicorn hair, intricate boxes made of bone, nundu fur...

Harry deduced that the area he was walking down now specialised in expensive rarities. He hoped not the whole of Avalon would be like that.

With a frown he noticed the dwindling amount of people crowding the abnormally long street, most of them taking a turn down a modest alley between two signs of illegible symbols. Harry’s curiosity urged him to go with the flow. He obeyed.

This time the path narrowed. Harry actually bumped shoulders with some people, but they scurried onwards without bothering to apologise or hear him apologise.

The architectural style declined in its elegance, gradually morphing into buildings resembling Diagon Alley's, so familiar to Harry, but not yet the filth of Knockturn. The mob of creatures was getting rowdier, too: wherein before most had been contained, now a few fights broke out, some shouting matches erupted and the shopkeepers attracted customers with trademark calls.

Harry pursed his lips at the noise and quickened his pace.

His feet carried him to a crossroads of sorts, except that it offered more choices to wander to. Harry stopped abruptly to think and to gauge his potential path.

The flow of people was mostly divided between two roads, one winding between two mighty walls of colourful shops and adorned by garlands of flowers, while the other contained a bit less people and whimsical glass buildings which Harry assumed hosted cafes and restaurants.

Less crowding? Swell. Harry moved to take that alley-

-and bumped right into a mountain of scale-covered muscle.

With a sneer, Harry recoiled from the very masculine chest and raised his eyes to stare right into his own reflection mirrored in golden-ochre eyes. The creature wore an expression of utter distaste and a pair of leather trousers – but obviously had forgotten to put on a shirt or a sweater. Or a robe. Harry moved away further, scandalised; wizards had a much better dress sense than that. A more _proper_ dress sense.

Harry assessed the brute of a male once more. His eyes widened. Behind him, a pair of gorgeous leather wings spread out, still and mighty just like the torso with threads of almost-invisible scales running down to his- eghm, waistband.

He had glimpsed some wings before, of course, but never so closely.

Not that he wanted to now, considering how the male skewered him with a glower before barking something in that nonsensical language Harry couldn’t make heads or tails of.

“Um... sorry?” Harry offered. His pride stung. Still, better his pride than his body; the male exuded a homicidal aura stronger than Snape’s I-hate-you vibes.

When the creature snarled at him, growling out a threat or a warning, Harry attempted to escape. He could handle a knife and threw some good hexes, but those were miniature dragon scales, so both Harry’s main weapons wouldn’t work. And he preferred scientific research to fighting, so he had never bothered with spectacular duelling spells his situation begged for.

Poisons or small handy artefacts made up his arsenal. A shame, really, that he hadn’t pulled them out of his trunk.

Harry whirled around and prepared to run – only to have his forearm grasped painfully tight.

“Let me go, bastard!” he shouted in vain at the creature who was dragging him somewhere, probably to deal with him at a more private place. A few passers-by halted but none watched for long. Harry’s wasn’t the only small fight in the street.

He pulled out his wand and cast a _Stupefy_. As he had predicted, the spell lingered only for a second on the scales before it bounced off. Harry barely dodged in time. The male smirked nastily.

“ _Huemath_ ,” he mocked in his language as he tightened his hold on Harry’s arm, making the younger wince and hiss in pain. The creature’s hand crept to his own wand holster and Harry knew with absolute precision that he mustn’t allow his opponent to use it.

Harry acted with forced calm, using probably the most powerful spell in his arsenal, the one he had seen Snape fling at a training dummy once.

“ _Sectumsempra!_ ”

The scales yielded this time, albeit absorbed most of the damage. A thin line of dark-burgundy blood trickled out of the wound, just as the male loosened his hold on Harry and staggered back, mostly from surprise rather than pain.

Harry ripped his hand away and sped past the creature, into terra incognita, hearing shouts and angry hisses behind him. He didn’t turn around to check if the creature had followed him, didn’t dare stop or risk drawing out his bag with the potions he could hurl at his pursuer. _Sectumsempra_ remained Harry’s trump card for years and his other battle curses wouldn’t breach the scales’ protection.

That left conjuring objects and utilising his surroundings...

Harry preferred to run.

A few rainbow-hued spells zoomed past his rushing form, one of them – an angry puce colour, very menacing – almost nicked his left ear, while another missed his leg by a hair. Harry was fast. His opponent was even faster, and the teen knew he wouldn’t be able to avoid conflict. He had a few tricks up his sleeve, but the mingling people hindered his usual duelling style.

 “Well, if we can’t avoid this conflict...” Harry muttered to himself, running straight into the nearest empty lane. For a second, he hoped he’d thrown the other off his tail- not so lucky. His ‘tail’ rushed after him.

Harry halted abruptly in the middle and spun on his heels to face his opponent, popping a shield into existence as soon as his eyes locked with murky golden ones. His panting didn’t prevent him from succeeding on the first try.

The male flicked his wand to summon a bronze-coloured stream of magic that assaulted Harry’s _Protego_ shield before evaporating, too weak to destroy it. Smugness oozed out of Harry. _Tough luck, bastard._

Irate and tired, Harry shot all attempts at diplomacy to hell. A vicious scowl drifted across his face and Harry’s eyes blazed with vengeful enjoyment as his wand pirouetted through the air in his hands.

Pants at duelling? Didn’t matter when Harry had mastered Charms.

The stray pebbles on the pathway wobbled and rose up into the air. Only inches at first. Then, as sweat beaded on Harry’s forehead from the intense concentration, the distance between the stones and the pavement increased. Now larger stones joined the smaller ones.

The creature must have sensed the charm at work as he hissed, but he probably didn’t have the necessary knowledge to deflect it. Harry used that to his advantage.

“ _Wingardium Leviosa Massima_!” He shouted the advanced charm. A wave followed by a swish completed the spell.

Letting out what sounded like a curse, Harry’s opponent jumped backwards from the onslaught of rushing stones – only to stumble on a small log Harry hastily conjured. The creature tripped and fell backwards, his head hitting the ground with a slight ‘crack’. Harry directed another wave of stones at the male, mostly aiming for the face (which would leave awful bruises) because the skin-coloured scales didn’t protect it like his chest.

Harry waited. When the creature showed no sign of consciousness, he dispelled the shield and walked over to his scaled, winged opponent.

“I’m going to pop you like a pimple,” Harry bit out spitefully. He raised his wand, prepared to do exactly that, when-

“I don’t suppose it will add you much popularity,” a light, amused voice remarked behind him. Notes of laughter swam in it. “Attrana’s looks are quite popular amongst females after all, even though he’s as dim as the stones he’s lying on.”

Harry whirled around, a spell on his lips. His magic enveloped him in a shroud of danger and fury, sizzling and sparkling around him, communicating Harry’s tempestuous mood and gearing up to blow to smithereens the next person to attack him.

The stones that had rocketed into the air again fell down uselessly as the incantation died on Harry’s lips at the sight of the newcomer, a girl this time, all her features human and normal.

Much smaller than himself and barefoot, she wore a periwinkle robe made of semi-transparent sparkly fabric. A single thread of nacreous beads hung from her long neck. The same threads adorned her ankles. She laughed again at his assessment, her golden hair rippling down her shaking shoulders like a cascade.

“You know my language,” Harry remarked calmly, coolly. He inclined his head to measure her up, but relaxed at the absence of any weapon on her. Not that people needed visible weapons to harm somebody else. “And you look human enough. Who are you?”

“They call me Nydia, and that’s the name you should use.” She shrugged before approaching him. Harry didn’t put his wand away yet. “Not human. Just interested in your culture.”

“Hmm.”

She stopped right in front of him. Harry stopped himself from stepping back; he tolerated contact only when he initiated it.

“Not going to ask me how I’ve come upon you?” she asked lightly. Harry shook his head with a conceited smirk.

“You followed us. Don’t know for how long, but I sure saw you at that crossroads and maybe even before that.” He levelled her with a gaze. “And you obviously know this... ‘Attrana’ guy, but you still didn’t help him, nor you are avenging him now. Why?”

“’Knowing’ someone and ‘knowing him well’ are two diametrically opposite notions.” Nydia grinned up at him. “The guy is a fellow Senex student, but they’re most likely expelling him before the year starts. If he doesn’t scramble enough brains to pass a couple of subjects, he’s out. Besides, although draconians generally belong to the range of species you don’t muck around with, he’s a failure of his clan in spell-casting. Too fragile, too.”

Harry eyed the fallen body with distaste – all bulk and sturdy muscle – before directing his disbelief to Nydia.

“Doesn’t look ‘fragile’ to me,” he spat, rubbing his sore forearm which had endured those steely fingers minutes before. “Wonder how he’s got into Senex at all. I hear it’s an educational establishment for the magically gifted, not for unstable mediocre twits who lash out at any person glancing at them wrong.”

Nydia chortled in amusement. “Believe me, he’s not as useless as he looks. He’s got a terrific flare for handling magical creatures... and later using their skins in crafting boots, gloves, and other accessories.”

“Still doesn’t cancel out the fact that he’s an unbalanced loon with no sense of measure.” Harry sneered and prodded the body with a boot, brushing Attrana’s face. Pure accident, of course.

“It’s your fault that he assaulted you,” she accused mildly, twisting a lock of her golden hair between her fingers. Harry swivelled his head to stare at her. “He’s a draconian. They value their space... to the point of obsession, actually, so-“

“I value my personal bubble, too, but you don’t see me snapping at any poor soul I stumble into.” Harry’s voice cut like a sharp shard of ice.

The girl shook her head, visibly exasperated. “You don’t understand. You humans never do- but that’s all right, I like you all the same.” After a moment of hesitation she continued. “You didn’t _apologise_. Draconians hang strangers who touch their skin and waltz away without even an apology. The greatest insult and all that. No wonder he was miffed. But I heard the sound of a human language and followed you here to see if you would get out of this hole you had dug for yourself.”

Harry’s face twisted into a grimace as he drawled in a dry voice, “I doubt you had any intention of intervening if I lost this fight.”

“Let’s just say he wouldn’t have injured you _too_ much.”

When she smiled, her eyes the colour of looming clouds sparkled, even if her lips quirked just a little. Cautiously leaning in as she beckoned him, Harry sniffed seashells and morning breeze.

“Searching for Senex, are you?” Nydia asked brightly in a lively voice that bubbled like water. If Harry wasn’t already infatuated with another person, he would have fallen in love with the sound of it. Alas, her beauties and charm were lost on him. “I can assist.”

He smoothly stepped away from her with a semblance of a grin. Mentally, he winced. Harry spent his free time surrounded by books or potions ingredients, but rarely people. The situation didn’t improve his social skills much: while he fancied being silver-tongued and charming when a reward dangled in front of his nose, most of the time his brazen words hurt others and attracted hate.

“I’m perfectly fine, thank you,” he replied warily. “Somewhat. I’m almost there, but I’d appreciate a push to the right direction no less.”

Nydia burst out laughing at his response. Harry pressed his lips into a tight line; he didn’t appreciate being laughed at. It reminded too much of the memories best suppressed.

“Sorry,” she forced out through the waning laughter. “You look very, very lost here. And I doubt you _truly_ want to drop by the red lights district where you’re heading now.”

Harry refused to flush, but failed in the endeavour. The ways of flesh flummoxed him, not least because he disliked touch and didn’t see much sense in interactions. Not to mention that his life provided him with a sense of fulfilment and purpose just by dumping on him mountains of trouble and scientific research to do, all without the necessity of forging relationships. Hermione, Terry, Luna, Regulus and Sirius were a lovely bonus, but, frankly, Harry easily imagined himself with no friends or relatives at all.

Tough, yes, but possible.

Perhaps that was the reason he had never hit it off with Ginny Weasley. At some point, after Lavender’s nagging to ‘stop being an antisocial loser and hang out with a girlfriend, for Godric’s sake!’, Acacia’s smug remarks about his lack of attractiveness, and James’s saucy jokes about hot evenings with his right hand, Harry had snapped and given the whole relationship thing a try.

Ew. Ginny’s fiery character and voluptuous form had attracted him at first, so their first dates had been okay. Not too pleasant, a bit stale, but okay. They would meet up at Fortescue’s, where Harry would treat her to some ice cream. They would sneak to Knockturn, feed King Cobras at the magical menagerie, explore muggle London, browse books (he chose serious Charms or Runes texts, while she preferred hex guides and light romance with some Quidditch in it), mock-duel and cast magic...

Those summer months had left Harry light and, dare he say it, happy.

And then _that_ started. The Touching.

Harry shuddered to remember. Awkward, revolting, oppressive, invasive... Harry would throw her hand off his shoulder, evade any and all attempts at kissing him. He fled as soon as her hand crawled down to the waistband of his trousers. Very soon, he had run out of excuses and, when she hadn’t relented in her assault, snapped and outright yelled that her assets appealed to him as much as piles of goo, and he would rather shag the Giant Squid because at least that creature didn’t have a mouth.

Ginny had looked hurt.

Well, perhaps he should have chosen his words more carefully. Talk about painful breakups. That day, Harry had acquired a whole family of devout haters and an even greater dislike of touching.

And a regret of ever hurting the girl who had been his friend, too.

So, no, he certainly wasn’t heading to a red lights district of any sort. Creatures or not.

“Where is Senex then?” he asked neutrally instead, fed up with the memories and the talk. Adventurer at heart, Harry usually loved visiting new places, exploring, seeing. Not so much when his stomach growled every now and again, and his feet burned with pain after the long walk. “Mind showing me?”

The girl cocked her head to regard him with a grin on her face.

“Hmm... Oh, I just might,” Nydia exclaimed finally with a nod to herself before deflating. “Wait, we’re in Avalon, so it would be weird to show you and let you off the hook without any sort of payment... People will look at me weirdly.”

Harry immediately tensed. If she belonged to the fairy-folk, she could hoodwink him without a second thought, so the idea of going along with a dubious deal didn’t thrill him in the slightest. A compromise, then? His terms, obviously.

“People will not have to know,” Harry tested carefully. He edged away from her, just in case. “And you’re going to Senex now anyway. One passenger in apparition – and we can part ways. It’s not like I’m demanding that you show me around the place.”

Nydia shook her head, shaking her finger in the air and refusing his deal. “Tut, tut, tut. Won’t work. It’s Senex, everyone always knows things, and they’d watch me funny. How about...” She paused for a second, deep in thought, and looked Harry up and down. “You’re human, right?”

Harry nodded. His shoulders retained their stiffness; he heard that while the creatures which resided in Avalon hated humans less than in his home realm, some purists still spouted idiocy about killing wizards off and bagging the Human Realm for themselves, as an extension of Avalon.

What if the girl was one of those loonies?

“A human living in the Human Realm... Ah, plenty of possibilities! But I think I’ll go along with a simple information trade.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. Didn’t sound too bad. Depending on the information, of course – if it was nothing personal, he could handle it.

“What sort of information are we talking about? Nothing private, I hope,” Harry warned her, his tone lowering to a silky almost-whisper, and a gorgeous smirk spread upon his lips. Sometimes, when Harry pulled a seductive-charmer card with his facial features and voice alone, he got what he wanted. No touching required, of course.

“Relax, human. Your life interests me as much as the routine of a flobberworm.” She grinned. “No, I’m talking about the general knowledge here. I like your realm, I like human lifestyle, I like your magic.”

“So, you want some bits and pieces of the info on our way of life,” Harry summarised with a frown. He hadn’t expected to hear so much enthusiasm about humans in her voice. Were the books lying?

“Got it in one!”

“Why not move there? If it fascinates you so much, then the logical course of action would be to witness things first-hand. Then you wouldn’t have to roam the streets in search of a stumbling, lost human to coax a chunk of knowledge out of him,” Harry pointed out, his eyes flashing with distrust. His face remained impassive, but he counted it a victory when Nydia shrunk and wiped that annoying sunbeam smile off her face.

“Humans don’t share this enthrallment by other races.” She nibbled on her lower lip. “I’ll end up either in a ghetto or on the dissection table in your wizarding hospital as soon as someone whiffs that I’m a nymph.”

Harry blinked. Oh. A nymph, then. Unlike vampires and werewolves, nymphs hardly ever resided in the Human World, probably all as afraid of the reaction as the girl in front of him was, and so he hardly possessed any information on them.

Generally pretty, rambunctious and fun-loving, flighty in love, fair-weather friends and deceptive allies – the fairy tales and almost fictional texts provided that information only. Harry acknowledged them as potential tricky buggers, but preferred to preserve his judgement until later, when he contacted closer with the representatives of that race.

Still, the warning of their unreliable nature rang in Harry’s head, and he forcefully sharpened all his senses. When he threw a look at her, her exotic blue-violet eyes stared clearly back, no trace of deceit in them.

“Side-apparating me to Senex can’t be that difficult,” Harry finally drawled, fussing with the locket hanging down his neck. Its cool surface encouraged him to display the same cool in his judgement and decision-making. “So, I’ll give you three pieces of information, will answer three questions about the Human Realm.”

The nymph bristled and immediately protested, “This is ridiculous! Three questions? Ha! The books will tell me more!”

“Why aren’t you a Human-Realm expert if those books can tell you everything then?” Harry raised an eyebrow and mocked further, “Or perhaps there is another reason? For instance, I’ve read that nymphs don’t have much magic in them, so maybe apparating is such a chore for you that it’ll require a week of re-charging?” He tsked.

“You-!” she attempted to hiss but failed. Nydia watched his unrelenting, cold stare and eventually nodded. Harry’s lips pulled apart to reveal a smile full of teeth. He didn’t much care about how many questions she asked – bargaining was the principle of the matter, like Regulus Black had taught him. “Fine! Only because your elusive native realm fascinates me and the books don’t give much away.”

Harry nodded with a triumphant air draping him. If he had not calculated the extent of her little obsession, he wouldn’t have risked the only willing helper storming away in fury, but his instincts never failed him.

On the other hand-

“I have a better deal.”

“Oh?” She blinked. “Let’s hear it then.”

“I will answer any of your questions about my native realm as long as you satisfy my curiosity about Avalon.” Harry raised a daring eyebrow. “It can be a start of a beautiful partnership. We’re both happy this way, no?”

“What about the adjoining realms?” the nymph asked, nibbling on her lip.

Harry frowned in reply. He didn’t want to come across as _ignorant_ , so he drawled, “Avalon will do,” making a mental note to look it up in the dictionary.

“All right,” Nydia relented after a few moments of deep thinking. Her hand grasped the delicate fabric of her robe before she released the material and motioned for Harry to grasp her arm. “I think it might be useful. Remember though, no personal questions.”

Harry snorted and quoted, “Your life interests me as much as the routine of a flobberworm.”

Another whirlwind of colour for the day swept away her bright grin.

{ **Design Your Universe** }

When Harry landed again, this time his hand was clutching a wet coldness he realised was Nydia’s arm. He released it quickly. Looking around, his eyesight immediately alighted at the sight of a fortress-like castle in front of them. It humbled and inspired fear, all hard lines and an aura of ancient power. Like Hogwarts, in a way, but more... vicious. More war-hungry.

Harry heard Merlin himself had built it to protect himself in that land of creatures. The fortress confirmed it.

Nydia tugged on the sleeve of his simple black robe.

“Come. To request the needed application forms you must go to Deputy Headmaster’s office,” she urged him as they entered the intricate metal double doors, which revealed a grand hall not unlike that of Hogwarts. The familiar archways and similar staircases soothed Harry, making him feel more at home.

“Although the man will likely redirect you to one of his assistants... Oh well, potential assistants, since everyone wants to Apprentice under him and prove themselves by being handy – which, of course, he uses, draining them of everything, and then boots them out of his office.”

“Sounds charming,” Harry drawled, not really concerned. He doubted the man would ensnare _him_ enough to lower himself to a slavish submission.

“Yeah. I’ll show you to him. You’ll feel the _real_ thing.” Nydia giggled again.

“Of course you will.” Harry flicked lint off his robe. “You’re my guide until you learn about the Human Realm.”

Judging by the structure of the building and a few peeks into the windows, Harry assumed that Senex was built like an immense circle with a vast inner courtyard, probably even larger than the school itself. Harry also glimpsed a few structures _inside_ that circle of the main building – dorms, Nydia explained to him.

“I hear you can take the exams and, with a bit of luck, spend the evening of the same day arranging furniture and unpacking,” Harry stated as they walked past a couple of human-like creatures with tails. “I’d like that. To be accepted as soon as possible.”

He simply didn’t have enough money to rent for more than a few days, and that was another reason he had chosen Senex – another school sounded tempting but offered no dorms.

Nydia threw him a disinterested look.

“Oh yes, the entrance exams are a blast; they go for an hour at most, because they judge your knowledge with a few convenient mind spells that reveal the level you’ve mastered in this or that area. You spend much more time choosing the subjects.”

Harry hummed in agreement. So far, everything went like he had predicted.

...Well, aside from loony draconians attempting to kill him for _touching_.

Harry glanced away from Nydia to sweep the almost empty halls with a look. Only occasionally would a pair of people or a lone figure walk into his field of vision.

“Is it always this silent? Not that I mind, of course.” Harry actually closed his eyes in bliss, his mind already lost in the fantasy of a school where he could study without raucous laughter filling the halls, without annoyances and idiots around. His bubble burst at Nydia’s laughter.

“Silent? That’s the word you never use for Senex!” she squeezed out through her fit of giggles. When she calmed down, the nymph swept her mass of golden curls back with her hand under Harry’s unimpressed stare. “Savour this peace and quiet because it won’t last long. The only reason for this peace is the semi-finals of Great Senex Duelling Tournament. Everyone is vying for the chance of catching the eye of a potential ally, betting, training, acquainting themselves with new duelling styles and techniques...” She paused. “The final duels are held in a week. You should go, really. If nothing else, you’ll see who you shouldn’t fuck with.”

Harry inclined his head in acknowledgement, even though he had promised himself to go before she had pointed out the benefit. His Ravenclaw curiosity was never sated, after all, and this was the perfect chance to see the power Senex so flaunted, to experience first-hand the sight of great duels and new magicks...

Harry licked his lips. Excitement bubbled in his chest.

Nydia threw him a knowing look.

“You might find a protector there, too.”

Harry turned his head to regard her closely from beneath his thick black eyelashes.

“I’ve read about this system of protectors and favours in Senex. The authors all blundered the explanations though, so in the end I didn’t learn much. Care to elaborate?”

Nydia watched him tersely before nodding, although she didn’t have a choice in the matter; she had promised to ease him into Senex by providing the necessary titbits of information.

“Most people assume our school to be of the ‘look-at-me-once-and-your-intestines-will-end-up-on-the-nearest-fence’ type. It is not. We’re not Malmorence University.” Visible shudders ran down her spine and Harry watched as she embraced her creamy shoulders.

“It’s tough there, I witnessed it once- but we’re not about that,” Nydia interrupted herself firmly with a shake of her head. “In Avalon, in most public areas it is actually prohibited to attack other students”

“Oh? So, I can enjoy my meal or go to the lavatory without the threat of ending up lying cold and dead with my head in my plate or stuck into the toilet bowl?” Harry grimaced in disgust at the last bit. Nydia smiled at him and nodded.

“Classrooms, the gym, duelling arenas – those are mostly safe, too. Your room has a basic ward on it, but the faculty encourage you to enhance it with your own protective charms and to add several layers of wards. The kills here are personal, so you are safe for now; no one goes around plotting the death of an unassuming little first-year human.”

“Attrana,” Harry deadpanned.

Nydia waved his concerns off. “Others don’t generally respect him. A plenty of girls want to go out with him – you’ve seen his looks! Real macho eye-candy – but few would join him in a scheme if you rise in their eyes by your academic achievements. And you’ve destroyed him in a duel once, so I doubt he will be as reckless and rash with you now. Attacking a draconian with stones requires _guts_!”

Harry ignored the words his paranoia didn’t allow him to believe in, instead addressing her line from before.

“So you’re telling me that all I read actually doesn’t matter because in reality Senex is a fluffy school where people don’t attack you until you attack them, give you out warnings before stabbing you in the back, and don’t act out of envy or antipathy?” he drawled in a dubious tone.

The nymph held a finger to her mouth, her smile luring him in with its secretive nature and dark allure.

Harry shivered.

“I never told that either. We just believe in quiet assassination off the school grounds. When we are not busy with projects and activities, of course.”

As she said that, they stopped in front of a set of double doors with a platinum plaque that read ‘ _Deputy Headmaster, Vesperus Jude’_.


	4. Settling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! So, this is me updating 'within the next decade', lol ;P Thank you so much for your lovely reviews, I read and enjoyed each of them, and they're what made me keep writing this as a fanfiction rather than turn it into an original story. Hopefully, there will be another update within the month, although I'm concentrating on When Lies Turn into Truth and Tearing the Veil from Grace at the moment as well :)

Nydia opened the doors for Harry and shoved him inside, mouthing a quick “good luck”. Harry resisted the urge to glower at her. Before she closed the door, she added, “Don’t worry about the language issue; the wards of Senex translate all speech into Avalonian inside the building.”

Well, at least that was a relief.

“Fascinating,” a dry voice deadpanned in cool disinterest as soon as Harry stumbled inside. “Yet another human staggering into Academia to try his luck. Any special talents I want to know of? No? You may go to my assistant over there.”

An indignant rebuttal danced on the tip of Harry’s tongue, but when the teen spun to face the owner of the rich baritone, he stopped in his tracks.

Harry appreciated beauty. The man sitting at the desk certainly embodied it: vivid red eyes, unblemished  dark brown skin, a strong jaw line, a flash of stark white fangs, and hollow cheeks. A masterpiece, especially with the long black hair which, in comparison to Harry’s own mane with a vaguely bluish tint, attracted with its pure darkness that made Harry think of eclipse. The entire office smelt that way, too, of starless nights and shadowy masquerades until dawn.

Enchanted, Harry’s eyes roamed all over the man, devoured him visually. Delicious aura, sculptured features, the vibrant gleam of eyes-

Until the same metallic voice cut the silence again.

“My assistant, please,” Deputy Headmaster Vesperus Jude ordered Harry firmly. No smirk, no smugness – all Harry earned was a blank face looking up from a pile of documents for a second. “I have enough on my plate without the added bother of potential students.”

If only beauty came with closed mouths.

Disappointment in himself clogged Harry’s throat and he wanted to facepalm at his own stupidity and appalling conduct. Had he ogled the man? Digusting.

Barely withholding an irritated harrumph, Harry marched to the desk at which an obviously harried guy was scribbling endlessly arrays of symbols or signing papers and shuffling them all over and over again. He plopped down on the seat in front of the desk - much less lavish than the one the Deputy Headmaster sat at - and took a moment to simply observe the young man... who wasn't really a man as much as a male being of another race.

The pallor of his skin stood out in the gloomy decor of the office, amid heavy dark purple curtains shielding the room from the sun, the intricately carved furniture of a brown so dark it was black, portraits and landscapes hanging on the wall. His hair was cropped so close to the scalp Harry couldn't decipher its true colour, while a greyish tint surrounded his dark brown eyes - along with the bags underneath, no doubt the result of endless work Deputy Headmaster Jude piled up on his plate. Even now the being - most likely a vampire, Harry deduced - hurried to jot down the information on a scroll so long another end of it fell to the floor near Harry's boot.

"I'm sorry," Harry interrupted. He was indeed sorry. No one deserved to be so worn down by work, not even in Harry's mind.

The vampire flinched and threw his head up at Harry. Blinked a few times.

"Ah... I'm sorry, who might you be?" His voice was raspy as if not used for a while.

"Harry Potter. I would like to apply." Harry mustered a smile. "The Deputy Headmaster directed me here."

The man, immersed in his own work several paces behind him, didn't even blink or look over.

The vampire nodded and smiled in understanding. A pained sort of smile, like someone was trodding on his foot.

"I understand. My name is Galvane Fairmount. Here," he began and reached for a cabinet behind him, pulling out several scrolls, "are the application forms and the rules of our school. Over there," he pointed to a low table and a menacingly-looking black armchair, the former overrun with pamphlets and leaflets, "you can find the information about the courses. Please take your time to read through everything, and once you have filled in the documents - please don't miss the part where you tick the classes you would like to apply for - come back."

Harry snatched the offered scrolls, and with another gaunt smile the vampire returned to his work. His hand flew even faster. Harry didn't miss the glance Galvane threw at the watch on his bony wrist, the panic in his eyes.

Marching to the armchair - that ended up much comfier than it looked - Harry flipped through the leaflets and immersed himself in reading.

The names of the subjects alone showed the difference between Hogwarts and Senex. He recognised the familiar Charms - which he would definitely be taking - Transfiguration, and Potions - again, a worthy choice - but his eyes went as wide as saucers when he saw titles like 'Blood Magic', and 'Siren Song Training', and 'Moon Magic', and 'Alchemy'-! His eyes feasted on the names alone.

After spending a considerable amount of time just reading through the texts he had, including the contract and the application forms, Harry made his choice.

He rejected the idea of Necromancy and Blood Magic, unfortunately - if he possessed a spark talent at all in the sphere, it would have resurfaced by now - as well as the idea of Alchemy, which required a substantial knowledge in Transfiguration, a subject in which he had never held much interest. After a long deliberation, he discarded the idea of learning politics- and history-oriented subjects. He didn't aspire to move in political circles, and he would learn the bare minimum of codes of conduct of different races and their etiquette through books and maybe conversation - hadn't Nydia wanted to prod him about humans?

His quill hovered a few minutes over Runes and Arithmancy. Harry sighed and shook his head. Nice, but having received rudimentary knowledge, he possessed enough skill to research on his own.

He enrolled in Potions and Charms, of course, but also Magic of Intent - which was similar to wandless magic but bore sometimes more unpredictable yet potent results. While wandless magic still needed an incantation, albeit in the speaker's mind, Magic of Intent allowed one to concentrate on what they wanted to achieve, and their magic itself gave form to their wishes.

He added Magic of Creation, another branch he had collected whispers about but never had the chance to take, which worked as a permanent conjuration. Other subjects that would allow him to follow in his mother's footsteps and become an inventor and Unspeakable were Magical Artefacts History, the completion of which allowed to move onto Magical Artefacts Creation in the next semestre, and Spellcrafting.

He wondered if his mother would be proud of his choices.

His fingers moved to the locked on his neck of their free will.

Finally, he indulged himself by applying for the testing for Elemental Magic. Tremors crept up his spine as Harry stared at the words in a careful cursive script. They called out to him. A slow smile spread on his face and somehow, Harry just knew, knew - this was a branch for him.

Once he finished checking, and re-checking, and making final decisions, he finally raised his head and blinked.

The room, which had been lit by the peeking rays of sunshine - no doubt a spell, because the thick curtains prevented any actual natural sunlight from getting in - now blazed with the light that streamed from garlands of tiny flowers of a myriad of colours. They festooned the walls and the ceiling, hung in random places, and wound around the spikes of the huge black Gothic-looking chandelier.

Harry marvelled at the transformation from a gloomy space at daytime to this.

The colours that blended into fantastic hues even softened Jude's sharp features as the man was talking quietly with a visitor, one of those people who had been streaming in and out of the office the whole time and whom Harry barely paid any mind in all the hours he had been sitting there.

He regarded the visitor - a tall young man with long dark hair, which seemed to be so in vogue here - and wondered again at how this place functioned. When he had entered the office, it hadn't struck him as big - but now he realised that aside from Vesperus's place at the biggest window, Galvane's desk, and his own spot, a few other chairs with people sitting on them dotted the room. He didn't hear them. He had to concentrate to even _notice_ anyone else, and their faces blurred. As if every workstation or armchair and low table combo, each nook morphed into a separate room that lacked the walls but stood alone.

Only the sound of a grandfather clock filtered through. A clock that, as Harry noticed, constantly attracted attention of Galvane the assistant.

The young man sighed, willing to put off the mystery of the room's dimension aside for a moment, gathered his papers, stuck some pamphlets carelessly into his backpocket, and marched to the vampire that didn't look any less glum and exhausted than before.

"I've filled everything in," Harry announced as soon as he was close enough. He carefully placed the scroll with the contract he had signed next to a few other similar ones.

Galvane kept writing frenziedly.

Harry coughed and repeated his phrase. As he turned his head, he locked gazes with the other visitor and noted the unusual eye colour - lavender, unlike any he had seen before.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Galvane exclaimed, and Harry looked at him. The lavender-eyed stranger swept past him. "I just- I'm a bit overworked, see? I have a date in half an hour and-"

"It's all right," Harry interrupted. A forced smile overtook his features. He really didn't want to listen to intimate affairs of a stranger. "Believe me, I want this over as much as you do. Let's just cooperate and make it quick?"

He really hoped that whatever his face was attempting looked close enough to an encouraging smile. Merlin, that's why he barely had any friends.

"Oh... Yes. Yes, of course." Galvane took his scrolls and parchment and scanned them for a few minutes, nodding approvingly to himself several times. Finally, he put them away. "Well, everything seems to be in order. Good choice of subjects, I have to say. Some of them are very challenging; if you run into trouble with them, just contact one of the Councilors of your race so they find you a tutor."

"I doubt I will," Harry said, unable to help himself.

Galvane shrugged.

"It isn't my place to correct other people's presumptions. You will be tested on your level of skill tomorrow, for some of the subjects. The time and place will be displayed by midnight on the memomirror. Other subjects require testing during the first lesson, and the rest, like Magical Artefacts History, accept students with no prior knowledge. Now, please go to the Earth Realm dormitories and meet the Council representative who will wait for you at the front gates. They will show you to your room."

Harry nodded and made to leave. Galvane moved to stand up as well before-

"Galen, where are you going, may I ask?" the quiet voice of Vesperus Jude cut through.

" _Galvane_ ," the assisstant muttered. "I have finished all the work you gave me for today, so-"

"You will be finished when I say so," the being said. He sounded calm, once again, as if breaking plans was just something he did. The absence of malice utterly befuddled Harry.

"But- Sir, you promised!"

"There is still work to do. This school is not running itself, after all. Sit back down and sort through these," Jude rebutted. He levitated a stack of parchment to Galvane's desk and Harry thought that he had never seen such a level of bastard-ness before in his life - and he knew Snape!

Shaking his head, he hoped that when he worked as an Unspeakable, he never got a boss like that.

 

**{Design Your Universe}**

 

Of course, Nydia wasn't waiting for him, but a map of the school hung not far from Vesperus Jude's office. The indications led him to a stone arch that was so well-warded that Harry almost _saw_ the runes the wardmasters had inlaid.

A short young woman waited for him.

"Good evening. You must be Harry Potter," she told him. Her voice was low-pitched and gentle, and although she didn't smile, there was a kindness written on her face, swimming in her dark brown eyes. "My name is Samya."

Her skin was light-brown and smooth, her hair covered with a silver and grey striped headscarf of the same colour as her shortish robe and loose trousers peeking from underneath. Her burgundy shoes gleamed under the light of magical lamps that framed the arch and shone so brightly it almost looked like daylight illuminated them.

"I'd introduce myself but..." Harry shrugged with one shoulder. "It seems a little bit redundant. Council representative?"

"I am," she said and outstretched a hand. "Come. Your room number is 203, second floor. Here is the key."

"Thank you."

Harry followed her through double doors.

Magic filled the space around them.

"You are here on a loan, right?" she asked and didn't wait for his stiff nod. "Then you must know that you receive a sum of money on your first day after the signing of the contract to buy your supplies, and afterwards you will keep receiving smaller sums each month."

"I know. Naturally, they're added to my debt."

A barest grin touched Samya' lips. "Naturally. You must have been told the jobs you may take here at Senex to repay it quicker, right?"

"Of course. Teacher's Assistant, potions brewer, warder, artefacts maker, librarian, researcher... There is quite a lot to choose from." Harry allowed a small smile to cross his lips and glanced up at the ceiling painted with stars that glowed and brightened the long corridor they walked. "If I apply myself, I may end up paying off a huge chunk of that debt by the time I leave school."

"Studying here," Samya began, giving him a searching look, "is hard. I do not only mean the studying itself - it's the politics and everything surrounding the smallest thing you say, the smallest mistakes you make. People are watching. There is always some sort of mystery or plot afoot. Sometimes, it spices things up, but it is also dangerous."

She stopped.

Harry flinched when Samya's hand descended on his shoulder in a small pat, and he realised with a start that even in high heels she barely reached him.

"It is especially hard for us humans, you know?"

"I can guess," he muttered and remembered Vesperus Jude. "We are the minority, and some races consider us weaker just because we lack extra abilities and not all members of our race are granted magic."

"Indeed. More than that, this is their world. They navigate the diplomatic sea far better than a person who grew up in the human realm would." Samya shook her head. "I was appointed Council representative just this summer, but you won't believe how much information I have discovered simply by listening to the beings from other realms speak. It fascinates as much as it frightens me."

"I'll take your word for it. I won't enter this Council myself, after all."

Samya stared. "Why? Judging by your marks - indeed, I was granted this information as well - you have very high chances of qualifying."

"Politics is..." Harry grimaced. "It's not really my cup of tea." He hesitated before continuing - because something, inexplicably, urged him to open up, to tell her the reason. "I love magic. I love creating, and researching, and casting spells, and drawing runes. There is something amazing about inventing your own spell or potion. It's easier to figure out the instructions for a draught than the instructions to a person, and there is no way to be in politics without figuring out how people work. I will always choose a laboratory over a Wizengamot courtroom."

Samya regarded him silently with her dark brown eyes before rubbing his shoulder and releasing him. They resumed their walking pace.

"I can't say I understand," she said but, once again, there was that unsmiling kind expression on her face, "but this is your life. Lucky for you, there are people like me who are willing to take care of such matters as interracial conflicts, settling offences, and attracting funding. Just keep studying and show everyone out there that magical humans are not less than a vampire or a demon."

Harry smirked. "That, I guarantee."

Samya snorted and bumped him on the shoulder before stopping in front of a wooden door that had Harry's number on it.

203, it declared in golden script.

"Don't be so cocky," Samya warned in a friendly way. "I, too, thought I was exceptional when I came here, but encountering so many other exceptionals made me realise the error of my ways." She smirked. "For instance, you said you do potions. Perhaps you will enter the same class as my younger brother, and believe me, if there has ever been a Potions and Alchey prodigy, it's him."

"Familial pride speaking," Harry rebutted, but a smirk played on his lips as well. Biding Samya goodbye, he entered the rooms that would be his for the next three years.

It was a small place.

Yet it felt like home even more than his Ravenclaw dorms.

The suite comprised a tiny lounge, a kitchenette, and a bedroom separated by dark purple screens embroidered with yellowish lace in abstract designs. A narrow door led from the bedroom into a bathroom done up in white and turquoise colours.

The furniture was simple and mismatched. A plushy violet sofa had a rickety chair with tawny upholstery standing nearby, a few stains marred the coffee table, while several tiny carpets littered the stone floor, all of the of different colours, and designs, and textures. Everything in the kitchen was of wood painted black with dark purple swirls and fire-proofing runes, while the table that leaned when Harry laid a hand on it, sat only two people.

The bedroom was in a similar condition. Deep purple sheets and cushions decorated the wrought-iron bed, and the yellowish lace from the screens decorated the wardrobe as well. The windowsills hosted a slew of pots, each differently coloured and with all plants dead barring a blue cactus that stuck out like a sore thumb and glowed in the dark.

 _Someone's interior design sense really, really sucked_ , Harry thought to himself.

Strangely, this awful furniture only soothed him, reminding the young man of the potions laboratory he had left behind, the only place where he could truly be himself and immersed in his own thoughts.

Finally, he walked up to a mirror in an iron frame that hung next to the door.

It didn't show his face. Memomirror, Galvane had called it.

Harry remembered the leaflets, the instructions.

"Harry Potter," he whispered and swept his wand across the surface of the mirror. It rippled.

Once the riptide calmed, letters 'Welcome!' appeared.

A second - and the surface abounded in words and notices, and he breathed deeply in at the realisation of how powerful a tool that was.

A memomirror was an artefact that allowed magical beings to communicate with each other: send messages, call by standing in front of the mirror and moving the wand in a certain manner, acess public notices. It was a notice board, an owl, and a floo firecalling system at the same time. Lavender would have killed to have one. Her affair with Bill Weasley would be going much smoother then.

Harry laughed and clutched the butterfly locket on his neck, his heart, and hoped his mother was happy for him.

 

**{Design Your Universe}**

 

Harry ambled to the examination room. Although outwardly he couldn't give a care, his mind frienziedly reeled with all the incantations, potions recipes, and spellcrafting tricks he knew. A hundred of other examinees crowded the marble corridors, someone bumped into him, but Harry hardly noticed. Only once, when a particularly strong shove almost sent him careening into the wall, did Harry look up.

"Why so frowny, sweetheart?" a guy a head taller, with short black hair and forget-me-not blue eyes, asked softly, taking him by the arm. Harry barely suppressed the impulse to actually use one of those hexes dancing on his tongue.

"I'm no one's sweetheart," he gritted out and wrenched his arm free.

The other man looked stumped for a moment before smiling. The smile accentuated the dimples in his cheeks, and the shine of blue in his eyes was the colour of his robes.

"Don't worry, I understand," he said and winked. Harry wanted to rip things. "We are all worried here about the tests-"

"I will do fine."

Harry attempted to hide the trembling in his hands. He certainly hadn't felt as pathetically insecure the day before as he did now.

"There is nothing wrong in admitting weakness-"

A woman appeared on the doorway of the classroom near which they were all standing, and ushered them in. Harry happily complied. Finding his seat, he never glanced around to see the strange person again.

He felt eyes watching him all the time and tried to not let it bother him.

 

**{Design Your Universe}**

 

It hadn't gone as smoothly as he had hoped. Oh, Harry definitely experienced no problem with the charms and potions they studied at Hogwarts, both in his year and beyond - and he grinned when he confirmed that Hogwarts education didn't lack at all when it came to the core subjects - but he hadn't taken into account that since Senex admitted students of other races who came from other realms, it meant that everyone brought in their bits of magic as well.

There was a question about spell structures he was seeing for the first time in his life, and ingredients for a draught coming from animals he hadn't even known existed, and a law from magical theory invented by an elf that was so useful Harry wondered why no one had come up with it in his own world.

He achieved high marks, he was certain. But...

He remembered his earlier confidence, his arrogance, and his cheeks burnt.

Perhaps he should take his mind off by doing some shopping? Harry could do with another change of clothing, although that wasn't his main concern right now, and while he could borrow books from the library - which he would need to find first, of course - he would have to buy supplies for potions and elemental magic. Provided he managed to enter the latter.

 _There is a problem_ , his mind immediately supplied. _The language charms work here, but how on Earth am I going to navigate the streets?_

Leaving aside the fact that he didn't even know where reasonably priced shops were or how to communicate with the shopkeepers, anyone could swindle Harry out of money without him knowing better!

_Nydia. She promised to help me out._

Of course, in return for some information, but Harry could deal with that. Just give her some scraps of knowledge.

_Easy, really. I just need to find her first._

Harry looked out the windows and into the courtyard, where the immense maze of dorms, undoubtedly squeezed into the small space thanks to dimension charms, sprawled. With no clue about which one he needed, he groaned.

 

**{Design Your Universe}**

 

Harry consoled himself that getting lost wasn't a big deal. _Even getting lost two days in a row._ After following a meandering cobble path - and coming across a freaking forest and a mountain of all things in his way! - he dropped on a stone bench and sighed. His fingers tugged on his necklace.

Wisterias shielded him from sunrays and allowed Harry to think.

 _Even though she is a nymph, and nymphs usually belong to the Acqua Realm as a rule, it doesn't mean that she can't have come from somewhere else_ , he thought as he absent-mindedly cast a charm on his legs to relieve the ache from walking. He wondered if he should dig up those notes about a Levitation potion that would allow him to fly for a period of time.

If he was going to get lost all the while, at least he would like to get lost in style.

He sighed again.

A charm Harry had cast alerted him to a presence before he heard the steps.

A shadow fell on his bench and a familiar voice exclaimed, "Someone should call the Aurors!"

Harry's head snapped up and he watched the male from before, the one with the dimples, and robes and eyes so blue it hurt to watch, and a voice warmer than Mrs Weasley's hugs.

"Why?" he asked suspiciously. Glancing around, he didn't notice any crime going on. Unless he was trying to rob Harry?-

"Because you stole my heart!" the man declared.

And it was so _bad_ , so corny and  _ridiculous_ that Harry burst out laughing.

"Now, don't you see how handsome you're when you laugh?" Without waiting for an invitation, which Harry probably wouldn't have given anyway, he plopped down on the bench next to Harry. "I'm Bela. Do I get the honour of knowing your name?"

Calming down, Harry scrutinised the man. Bela. Yet another person who he shouldn't even call a man, because judging by the light in his eyes and paleness of his skin, he belonged to a different race.

He could act offended, huff, get up, and walk away, but something inside him rebelled against the idea.

"Count yourself lucky, because you do. My name is Harry."

They shook hands, and Harry appreciated that Bela didn't take his earlier laughter and the small smile playing across his lips now as a sign that he would be okay with hugging or kissing cheeks when they had just met.

"This is the first time I see you around here," Bela told him. His intense eyes devoured every reaction Harry gave.

_Apparently he wants to make up with looking for the absence of touching._

Harry shrugged. "This is my first morning here."

"So late? Usually new students prefer to arrive in the beginning of summer, to take some summer courses to adjust. It isn't easy to some to Senex when you have spent all your life in another realm."

"I hadn't made this decision until recently," Harry said. He ignored the burning in his chest at the events spurning that decision.

James, scorn, _disowned_.

He preferred being shocked and hateful to... this. To all this hurt brewing in his heart.

"Well, I'm happy you did, because we wouldn't have met otherwise. So, whatever happened that made you decide, it's obviously for the best."

Bela winked. Harry sent him a glare so glacial the other man almost withered on sight.

_He knows nothing._

Nothing of James and the pain he inflicted. Nothing of the man he wanted to call 'Dad' but couldn't.

Harry hated people like this, people who hurt others with careless remarks.

"Um, I probably said something wrong right now, didn't I?"

"You did."

"I'm sorry," Bela said, and the sincerety in his voice startled Harry. "I can make it up by treating you to a- oh, damn, isn't it early for dinner? in any case, supper will do then- in a lovely restaurant I know. We can walk, it isn't very far, or I'll side along you-"

"First, don't pretend you're doing this as an apology. I bet you planned to offer me this the moment you approached me," Harry said. He narrowed his eyes and fought a smile at the sneakishness, pushing any thought of James out of his mind.

Bela chuckled and nodded.

"Guilty as charged!"

His eyes, admiring, as they traced Harry's features.

"Second," the wizard continued, "even if I agree, I'm afraid it would be a very dull supper for you, because there will be no conversation between us. I don't know Avalonian- or any language other than English and a bit of Latin, unfortunately. And I highly doubt that you were ever interested enough in human languages to learn either."

"So, if I invite you out, there will only be awkward clanking of forks and silence?" Bela asked after a pause.

Harry refused to let his imagination paint drooping dog ears.

"Well, I guess there is no other choice." Bela sighed before a grin bloomed across his features, enhancing them. "I will just have to cook something myself."

"I hope you are not using my kitchen for that."

"Oh, no, no, no. Nope. See, I don't think blowing up your kitchen would make a favourable impression on you. There is nothing that puts off the guy you're trying to woo quite like destroying their property."

"I don't even want to know whether this piece of wisdom has come from personal experience."

"I don't want you to know either," Bela easily agreed. "Let there be a veneer of mystery fluttering around me."

Harry refused to smile.

Meeting new people had never been this easy.

Bela continued, "But anyway, if we're meeting up at my place, I'm afraid I'll need some time to prepare everything."

"Not that I'm eager for it, but isn't making dinner supposed to take a couple of hours at most?"

Harry realised that most of the food he had ever eaten had been prepared by someone else, and was incredibly grateful for the existence of the canteen at Senex, even if the cuisine didn't seem as impressive as at Hogwarts.

Bela only grinned sheepishly. "I'm not talking about making the dinner itself. I meant figuring out how cooking works on the whole so that at most I'll give you indigestion, not outright kill you. I know that there are some people into corps- er, very silent beings who don't move, but I'm afraid that I'm not one of them."

"If this was supposed to reassure me and make me want to go, you are doing something wrong. Again."

Bela sighed. "You're very pretty, Harry, but very cruel."

"Don't they usually say 'pretty on the outside, ugly on the inside'? I suppose it's me," Harry threw carelessly.

Acacia, James' second wife, used to repeat it often, a sentiment echoed by Lavender when she blew up at him, and something written on James' face sometimes. Harry didn't _feel_ particularly evil - all he wanted was to be an Unspeakable, hoping it would connect him to his mother even if life had torn her away from him so easily - but people sometimes accused him as such, so there must be a grain of truth to it.

Hermione, Terry, and Luna didn't care for the ugliness of his soul. Other people did.

"I didn't mean it seriously!" Bela exclaimed and leaned in, an inch away from Harry. Although his voice and eyes were warm, his skin was cold. Probably a vampire, then. "You should never say such things about yourself, even as a joke."

Harry shrugged. Why sugar-coat the truth?

"It's fine. Believe me, there is nothing wrong with my self-esteem."

_Except that it's a tad too high, but, well... What can I do when other people are so lacking they're lowering the standards?_

Then Harry remembered the questions he hadn't responded, and bit his lip. Arrogance was only acceptable when there _was_ something to be arrogant about.

Bela observed him intently.

"Why are you here?" he asked.

"I was... taking a walk," Harry said after a pause. Seeing Bela's climbing eyebrows, he gave up and admitted, "Actually, I was taking a walk because I was looking for someone."

"You didn't find them, I take it."

"Would we be talking if I did?"

"Did you get lost? Do you need help?"

Harry swept the building in front of him, the cobblestone path, the stone benches, and wisterias with a glance. He had not a remote idea where he had stumbled to.

"I- I won't say no to it," Harry said and continued before Bela could start laughing at him. "First, I need to know where the Aqua Realm dorms are, and second, how to return to Earth Realm dorms from there."

Bela's eyes closed as he thought for a second before they flew open. He sprung to his feet.

"Okay. It's my first year here as well, but I've been at Senex for two months, so I probably won't get us lost." He grinned.

"Are you always operating under the illusion that using words like'probably' actually inspires trust or am I a special case?" Harry demanded.

Bela offered him a hand, which Harry ignored to get up by himself. He let it fall. Again, Harry appreciated that the (probable) vampire respected him enough to not disturb his boundaries by just suddenly grabbing him.

"I'll tell you a hundred more cheesy pickup lines to show you just how special you are," Bela promised, making Harry shudder in horror. "But before that, I'd really like to know you better. Say, what subjects are you taking? I hope that at least one of them is Blood Magic because-"

 

**{Design Your Universe}**

 

"Do vampires have a habit of poisoning their dinner guests?"

"Do I even want to ask?" Nydia shook her head and grinned before Harry could reply. "Scratch that, I definitely want to ask. What have you got yourself into this time? Irritating draconians, befriending a gorgeous nymph, dining with vamps... you're shaping up to be quite the adventurous guy, huh?"

"It was an accident," Harry stressed and snorted. "Both times."

Nydia sighed wistfully. "I wish _I_ were getting invited to dangerous dinners as an accident. It's so romantic, wondering whether he or she is going to poison you or not. Or if they'll change their mind at the last moment and hold you there as your body convulses, and the last thing you see is their sorrow-filled eyes..."

Harry watched her with big, big eyes.

_I thought she was the sane one._

"I think you're definitely misunderstanding something about romance."

"Hey, it's because I was reading human literature! Poisoning and tragedy really is a thing in there."

"Yes, it was. Centuries ago."

"Nonsense," Nydia told him resolutely and waved his silly opinion away. Harry gritted his teeth and wondered why couldn't someone _else_ be interested in human culture. "Some things are never out of fashion, and beautiful murder is one of them. Especially when love is concerned."

"This is not a debate I want to be involved in. Can we talk about potions theory instead? You could tell me the way you harvest water plants in your realm, because I hear that it is very different from-"

"No. I didn't acquire a human pet to talk about potions. I'm up for warding, human culture, or that gorgeous vamp guy you asked out on your first day."

" _He_ asked me. And not out, but to a dinner as an apology. And I'm not even sure I'm going, because-"

"Oh, you _are_ going, or I refuse to go shopping with you."

Harry sneered and pointedly looked away from her light-blue eyes blazing with merry laughter.

"You make it sound like I'm some vapid wizard who can't imagine his life without shops and wants to buy the newest shampoo for his luscious golden hair."

He was not thinking about Draco Malfoy. Of course not.

Nydia sighed wistfully yet again. "Oh dear, I wish you could be such a wizard. I definitely prefer clothes-shopping to all those smelly apothecaries you will have me visit." She tapped her chin with a finger. "Bookshops are all right, though. I suppose I could do with some runes literature, I'm running out."

"You could go to the library."

"Yes, but-" She grimaced. "Library books are not the same thing at all. I love making notes and markings, and believe me, you don't want our librarian see you do that."

Harry inclined his head. Remembering Madame Pince, he wondered if librarians shared traits everywhere.

He glanced around the room. Everything in it was in white and golden hues, with a smattering of turquoise here and there. The furniture that would usually be wooden, like tables, chairs, sofa legs, and the like, shimmered in the waning sunlight, made from a material that resembled sheer mother-of-pearl. Painted white seashells decorated shelves that hosted books and tiny golden pots with coral-like plants. He noted that most of the books had runes and numbers on the covers.

"You seem to enjoy Ancient Runes," Harry remarked, standing up. He walked up to the nearest shelf and traced a finger down the spine of a huge leather-bound book with gems on it. The title claimed it was the fullest compilation of Ancient Runes and their main meanings.

"Arithmancy, too," Nydia replied, observing him from her sofa, her legs drawn up to her chest and a blonde fringe obscuring one side of her face. "Some passion in both is a must when you want to become a Mistress in Warding."

Harry blinked in surprise. He hadn't anticipated such a serious pursuit from a girl he deemed so airheaded.

"Are you any good yet?" he asked.

Nydia smirked.

"If you are a good boy, I'll drop by and make your room one of the most impenetrable ones. For a first year, at least. There are things I can do with wards few other people can."

"For instance?" Harry returned to his armchair and grabbed a pastry from a huge seashell that served as a dish.

"I can make not only defensive wards, but offensive ones as well. Those that won't only incapacitate your enemy when they actually strike, but shoot balls of fire or ice arrows within a certain range. Wards with different sensitivity - those triggered depending whether the person is magical, or depending on the amount of magical power thay have, or even their race. Wards that enchant and act like an Imperius. Wards that absorb foreign magic, and those that strike back... There is a lot you can do with wards."

"It's... fascinating." Harry smiled. "I have mostly come across simply defensive or concealing wards, both in reading and in life. So, I wasn't of a very high opinion of the branch. But hearing you speak like this..."

He shook his head. A wizard's lifespan was a long one. Harry was sure he could delve deeper into warding one day, after mastering the branches of magic he concentrated on at the moment.

"Well, I'm sure you have your strengths, as well." Nydia stood up. "I remember your charms work with Attrana and the stones, and it's something I haven't seen even from people older than you. I'm no Charms Mistress, make no mistake, but when there is skill, you have to be blind to not see it.

"Now, I have a prior engagement, but I'll send you a letter on your memomirror and tell you when and where we are meeting to buy your supplies." She winked. "Try not to get lost this time!"

Harry wanted to strangle her, and wondered if that was a sign of a budding friendship.


	5. In Silent Anguish

In a dream (a memory):

An invisible brush painted the acacia flowers in his hand black. Harry took in a shuddering breath. Closed his eyes.

He dropped the flowers in front of the headstone, where they joined others. Hundreds of little black blossoms linked together like flocks of crows.

Occlumency, what little he knew of it, allowed him to keep his cool even now, but occasionally one particular emotion would sparkle, jump out in his mind like a flying fish above waters. The most prominent was guilt. Harry didn’t allow himself to remember the reason.

A presence hovered at his back.

“Black flowers don’t really suit her. She was too cheerful for that,” Harry murmured into the air. _Of course, much of her cheer was at my expense._

James snorted. “Leave it. It’s not like you care. You hated her.” He slurred the words.

Something in Harry’s chest clenched. He kicked a pebble, propelling it into a mound of funeral wreaths on his stepmother’s grave, scattering them into a maze of patterns.

“She hated me as well, if you’d remember,” Harry said and desperately wished his father would indeed remember and recognise the truth.

“Nonsense. She loved you. You were like a second son to her.”

_Of course he wouldn’t. If there’s one thing James is gifted at, it’s ignoring the truth that his family isn’t a stronghold of love and community._

A cruel smile twisted Harry’s lips. “She never had a first.”

“You are happy, aren’t you?” James snarled. Spittle landed on the boy’s cheek, while the man’s hand flew to his wand. Harry took a careful step back, shoulders raised and sobering charms rushing through his head. “Happy that she died. Another dead mother in your life – why don’t you start a collection?”

Harry paled and his hand flew to the locket on his neck that hummed and reassured him, and prevented him from lunging at his father, smashing the bottle in his hands against the headstone, and finally letting all the pain and neglect that had built up for years out.

His mother’s love prevented all of that.

“Your pain doesn’t give you the right to accuse me of anything,” Harry told him sharply instead. He wished someone could come and distract James from him but now that the bereaved family completed the rites of passing, few people lingered and they prioritised other concerns, such as socialising – his stepmother had moved in political circles that provided power more than friendship. “I’m suffering as well.”

He resisted the urge to point at his sunken eyes and clothes that hung on him. Despite her treatment of him, he had cried on finding his stepmother dead, too.

His father only snorted.

“It doesn’t really matter whether you suffer or not,” the man said and his eyes hardened, and his voice filled with a hatred Harry had never witnessed from him. “The only one who deserves to suffer is the bastard who did this.”

The boy shivered. Turning around, he faced his father. “Do you think it was a curse of some sort?”

“I bloody well know it was!” James barked, making Harry flinch. The man breathed in deeply and dropped onto a marble bench. He stared off into the space above the headstone rather than his son’s eyes. “It doesn’t matter what the investigation says; it wasn’t an experiment gone awry that killed her, it was someone else’s blasted spell!” His lip curled. “And I swear I will get them, whoever they are.”

Harry recognised the expression from the few times he had seen a similar one in the mirror. It never ended well, such utter hatred. He swallowed.

“Spells and curses aren’t the only weapon on earth. If she were indeed murdered, it could have been a potion or a ritual as well, and that’s only if we consider the most popular means of casting magic. You shouldn’t discount any possibility in your investigation,” Harry whispered. He paused before lifting his hand to rest it on his father’s shoulder, cautious, hesitant. “Whatever you think of me, I’m not a monster. I’ll always be here to help you. If you wish.”

Before James could respond, he turned his back.

On hurrying out he glimpsed strands of gold gathered into an elaborate hairstyle, and dithered. His eyes locked on those of his stepsister.

Lavender watched. Watching, always watching, and observing, and thinking, and disapproving, but never saying anything. Harry would have given a lot to break the silence between them, that wall carefully built by their parents and even themselves, but tearing through the bricks would require too much effort that he wasn’t going to undertake alone.

He was always alone. In that house. In his mind.

Lavender was as lovely as Acacia had been in life. Harry felt like looking at a ghost-

-pale hands, pale lips, everything too pale, everything too red-

-because that day she even gathered her hair in the same updo, adorning it with a wreath of artificial flowers.

There were always flowers.

The Brown family was known for its flower trade, even prided itself on growing only the best specimen, only the most long-lasting, vibrant, and exquisite. Their flowers usually were not fit to be potions ingredients, which gathered lot of criticism in certain circles, but even the Malfoys appreciated their delicate beauty, planting them in their private gardens.

Harry had once tried to win Acacia’s affection by memorising the names of plants, their properties, the right way to care… Nothing worked.

Eventually, he gave up and built himself a home among books. Adventure books gave him a friend before he met Hermione and Terry, while textbooks gave him power. Flowers were forgotten and any mention of them consciously banned in his mind to the point of dislike towards every person knowledgeable in plants, including Neville, that Gryffindor boy who cried too much but preserved a love towards all things living that touched even upon Harry’s heartstrings.

 Neville was very selfless. Harry, the opposite.

It wasn’t that James (or even Acacia and Lavender) neglected and abused him all the time. No, even his mind wouldn’t paint his father as a demon. James would joke with him sometimes, and ask about his marks, and disperse snippets of affectionate moments.

But Harry was greedy and wanted more than snippets. He wanted his father to know more about him than the general facts of his life. He wanted his father to know small things about him, too, the way James knew Lavender’s tics and that she loved adding honey to anything sweet, her favourite colours, her embarrassing moments, her crushes, and how to make her smile.

James never made Harry smile. Even when he joked, half the time it was not funny or plain offensive, often aimed at degrading all the Houses outside of Gryffindor. Lavender, wearing gold and red, would snicker, while Harry would stare stonily and fumble with his bronze and blue necktie. James would tell him he didn’t have a sense of humour. That Harry couldn’t take a joke.

_He hasn’t outgrown Hogwarts, has he?_

Harry often wondered whether James behaved like this with his real mother as well. He doubted she would have supported such juvenile behaviour, even despite being a Gryffindor, just like Ginny Weasley didn’t let people make fun of someone for their House. Ravenclaw she protected with extra ferocity. One reason was Harry, of course. The other reason had blonde hair and radish earrings.

A pang resonated when he remembered Ginny. He wished she had never had romantic attraction towards him, almost as much as he wished he could have taken back the hurtful words he had flung at her. He wished his pride let him apologise to people.

Another glance at Lavender. She opened her mouth, as if to shout-beckon him, but her friend Parvati snatched her attention first. Harry grasped the opportunity to flee.

Indeed, he wished he could apologise but he doubted that would ever happen.

 

* * *

 

 

Harry woke up disoriented. Sleeping at a new place, the last thing he expected was to have a flashback of his stepmother’s funeral. Not his brightest moment, that day.

Then again, how could anyone fault him for some disorientation?

He had been the one to find Acacia Potter’s body.

Harry pushed away the images of a dark grey sky, broken body, and shattered vases of flowers out of his mind. Perhaps if he hadn’t-

He pushed away the guilt, too, and it was harder.

_There are so many other things I can do if I can’t go to sleep._ He turned his attention to a handful of shrunken boxes scattered across the floor with his school materials for the classes he had been accepted to (every class aside from Elemental Magic, for which he would have to go through separate testing). If he would ever get the idea to shop around with Nydia in tow, it would mean his absolute and utter madness.

Although he wouldn’t mind to have another conversation or two with her, especially about runes. He enjoyed hearing her theory that connecting runes in certain shapes influenced not only the result of an incantation but also its power. She was still testing it but so far everything fit.

Harry preferred casting spells to engraving runes, but either method worked if he wanted to produce an artefact.

Standing up and stretching like a cat, he lazily pulled on a curtain to let in some morning light that fell on one of his boxes with childlike curiosity. That box contained scrolls and scraps of parchment with Harry’s research. He didn’t want to even think about unpacking that one.

_Or finding a place where I can store everything correctly._ He swept the small suite with a look. _Merlin, it’s so tiny compared to the manor. How can people live like this?_

Of course, he had been plenty of times at the Weasleys because of his former friendship with Ginny but they preferred spending their time elsewhere, on the nearby fields and empty manors. And at his own manor, aside from his bedroom and bathroom, he had a lounge, a potions lab, and a library all to himself, separate from the rest of the house and warded against stray visitors like Lavender’s friends.

A single room and living-room/kitchenette was, while an upgrade for some, a letdown for him.

_Well, at least I’m studying at one of the greatest schools in the history of all the realms. Not bad._

On this positive note, his mind drifted to the numerous lines of research contained within the box he was holding. A great part of it involved potions. Some had been developed with Professor Slughorn, whose affection for his late mother made the man pliable to work with and eager to provide Harry both with forbidden books and knowledge and with the addresses of illegal ingredient-sellers. Harry had published a couple of potions already and got due reward for them, but a few of the potions in the process of being developed contained ingredients that might be a bit too… prohibited to declare them. However, he knew where to sell the finished ones.

Still, his potions talent hardly compared to his talent in charms. The box contained it all: diagrams, half-finished rambles on the theory, the outlines of runic arrays and arithmantic support, variants of Latin incantations, ideas scribbled in the middle of the night in a burst of inspiration…

_I can’t believe there are people who think that creating something involves hammering away at only one job in single-minded abandon. How can anyone stop at just one project?_

Well, definitely not Harry.

Just like his boxes, even Harry’s personal trunk was filled to the brim with notes and scrolls and spare bits of parchment strewn around in a system no one but him would understand. Half-finished, half-enchanted items pockmarked his room back at the manor. Strangely, it worked.

Whenever Harry ruminated too much upon a single problem, he wouldn’t find a solution, but whenever his attention scattered, a previous issue almost solved itself.

He only wished his life would solve itself as well.

 

* * *

 

“Aren’t you glad I dragged you here?” Nydia’s smug voice barely seeped through the roar of the crowd.

“You didn’t have to drag me here, because this is somewhere I actually wanted to be for once,” Harry parried, his eyes never straying away from the scene happening in front of him.

A spectacle indeed.

On a fine evening a couple days before the start of the term, Harry found himself at a stadium crowded by any race imagined and overlooking a match between a green-skinned female in a strange attire of tree branches, and a ginger wizard. The wizard lost in several moments – tree branches pierced him right through, though missing the vital organs.

“Now that’s one lady I wouldn’t want to cross,” Harry muttered, wide-eyed.

“She was last year’s champion, as far as I remember,” Nydia mused and slipped a lock of her golden hair between her fingers. “Pretty little thing, but vicious as hell.”

“Reminds me of someone I know,” Harry muttered, remembering Ginny when the Gryffindor was insulted.

Thoughts of Ginny flew out of his head when the next duellists were announced and Harry recognised one of the contestants.

“I know this guy!” he exclaimed. Nydia bent over to look better.

“Was this the guy you were talking about?” At Harry’s surprised look she rolled her eyes. “I can put two and two together. Considering how you cling to me, you poor human thing-“

“Excuse me!”

“-and beg to spend all your time with me, you haven’t had an opportunity to make many acquaintances yet. Especially not vamp champs. So, this must be him.” She squinted. “Looks hot enough but I can’t say much from here.”

“Nymphs don’t have perfect vision?”

“Only underwater.”

The fight began. Harry admired the combatants, their fluid motions, their grace, arches of spells and elaborate hand gestures that accompanied incantations. This being the second-to-last duel, both opponents were skilled. Harry wondered who would win.

For a second, when Bela was dodging a yellow burst of light that charred the grass when it landed on it, their gazes crossed. Harry, his sight enhanced by an advanced charm – he could have cast the same for Nydia but she hadn’t asked and he hadn’t offered – noted a smirk blooming on the vampire’s face.

Until then, both opponents stood and flung spells from a significant distance.

Bela changed it.

Using super-speed, a vampire talent that allowed those gifted with it to cover distance fast for a short time, he blinked into existence at the other fighter’s shoulder. His hand moved, a dagger flashed. Bela’s opponent, a muscled young woman with a ferocious haircut, staggered and struck in response. The vampire super-sped away before she got him.

A humming chant broke from her lips.  Tendrils of green mist curled and twirled into being, spreading, swallowing the arena, bit not seeping through the wards. Bela raised a spherical shield. The mist devoured it in patches, but another, this time stronger, protection emerged.

Harry muttered an experimental spell that would allow him to see through the fog – and cursed.

His eyes hurt.

_Seems like these two sight-enhancing spells conflict when cast together,_ he couldn’t help thinking even as he cancelled both before he rummaged his brain for a gentle healing charm without a dozen of side effects. They were one reason why healers preferred potions.

He missed some of the action – an exciting part, judging by the whistles of the crowd – and Nydia’s nudge returned him to the present.

“If this is your guy,” she told him in his ear, speaking loudly because the crowd was even louder. “You’re hella lucky, my human friend. Damn, had he been female, I’d dig him, my word!”

“Your word doesn’t really count for much,” the boy replied automatically. Ignoring Nydia’s offended sniff, he cast the first eyesight charm.

The situation changed now.

The fog cleared, and the opponents stood very close. The female’s body was covered in pelt, a clear result of a semi-controlled lycanthropic transformation. The were skin was usually immune to poisons and magical damage, so Harry supposed she had cast the mist both to damage her adversary and to obscure his vision so she could sneak up on him. However, she must have committed a mistake.

Bela was breathing hard, a claw mark marred his face, but he was smiling and holding his opponent’s chin very gently.

He whispered something and tightened his fist at the level of his neck, and his smile was so very, very tender.

She smiled, too, and gripped her neck, and pressed.

Harry waited, and the audience waited, and Bela waited, all until the female’s face turned blue and the judge made a sign to stop. Harry didn’t see Bela’s eyes but then the vampire turned and sent Harry a cocky grin and a wink. The crowd’s cries thundered in his ears.

Harry hesitated to smile back, only looked.

The judge announced the clear winner.

_I would have never expected this from a guy like him._

Thankfuly, Harry would never participate in competitions like this.

 

* * *

 

 

Harry was nursing a strange beverage with too many unrecognised spices (courtesy of Nydia who decided to treat him) when the final fight started. It was Bela again, unsurprisingly, and a… well, it was that female again, from one of the previous fights. Green-skinned, with hair twisted and ridden with decorated maple branches, but definitely a female.

Harry leaned forward, fired up despite himself. Bela’s earlier performance, the one he had watched, had intrigued him. He scrutinised the man’s posture: confident. His face, however… Thanks to Harry’s sight-enhancing spell, he didn’t miss the way the vampire’s lips twisted into a grimace briefly at the sight of his opponent.

 “Oh, that’s bad,” Nydia muttered. Harry paid attention to her for once. “For your guy, I mean. A vamp is at a disadvantage against a dryad.”

Harry hadn’t believed dryads existed in reality, and tucked away the knowledge for the future. For now, he asked, “How so?”

“From what I’ve seen of this guy from his previous fights – the ones you missed because you got lost again-“ She glowered, while Harry pretended to detail the robes of a werewolf next to him with his eyes. “He uses Blood Magic in his fighting-“

“And dryads don’t have blood,” Harry finished, remembering a passage from a book in Hermione and Terry’s library. “So, there’s nothing to manipulate.”

He wondered why he hadn’t recognised it before. The thought that Bela had used a variation of the Imperius spell had popped into his mind, but he had dismissed it; mind control was a tough branch of magic, and hardly achievable without a potent spell, a ritual, or a sacrifice. The Imperius, like the other Unforgivables, belonged to the last category because casting it took away a bit of the soul. Harry had vowed to never use them, even in a dire situation.

“It’s strange.” Nydia frowned. “Her aura seems different.”

“Aura?” Harry asked but the nymph waved him away.

“Leave me be, my overly curious human,” she told him gently but firmly, as if _he_ were the chatty and annoying one! “For once just shut up and let me watch. I even bought you a drink for that reason.”

“And here I thought you bought it because hearing that I’ve never tasted this made you cry,” Harry muttered spitefully, but the nymph’s eyes were riveted on the scene playing out in front of them. He joined her – not without mentally scribbling this injustice in a petty corner of his mind.

The fight just began – and Harry already had many things to analyse.

As soon as he moved, Bela cast a shield that allowed him to fight but move at the same time. Harry hadn’t seen this particular variation before, and from the faintly pink glow deduced that it might be Blood Magic again. It absorbed a spell the dryad cast so fast Harry only saw the tiny colourful explosion that vanished at the contact. Strangely, the shield didn’t vanish.

Strangely, because, as Harry knew very well from the theory (albeit not from much practice, outside of DADA classroom), shields that didn’t require the caster to stand in one place were unreliable and easily dissolved. Moreover, they sucked out so much energy that it was simply easier to cast a sphere-like stationary charm like Protego, or just duck and run.

If Harry ever encountered someone in real fight, he would choose the last course of action. No need to prove his heroics when you could just run away and ignore the problem. Out of the enemy’s sight, out of the enemy’s mind.

Anyway, the dryad, after casting a few more spells, which the shield withstood (Harry wondered if it was powered by the magic in Bela’s blood rather than the magic in his core), went for the kill. He recognised the use of elemental earth magic by the female immediately when stems burst through the ground and attacked Bela’s shield.

However, he could also recognise that the stems were not of ordinary plants.

“Cambiviperia,” Nydia whispered and whistled.

“Let’s pretend I know what it is.”

She opened her mouth, but Harry stopped her. “No. I’m not interested enough in Herbology to know.”

He blinked when he turned back to the fight and…

The plant was very successfully trying to choke the young vampire, the shield long gone into oblivion. Judging by the desperation in Bela’s hands as he grappled with the verdant monster, he was very much in a hurry to breathe. At least it was better than the vampire’s own fight, where he made his opponent smile creepily while strangling herself.

“Isn’t he going to die?” Harry asked.  Not that he cared that much, but… Killing someone in front of so many witnesses was just so gauche and unintelligent. The right way was to make sure no one suspected.

Nydia shrugged. She didn’t look too sad either.

“Usually the judges intervene… but the occasional death once in a while makes it more sporting and entertaining, don’t you think?”

As it turned out, Bela didn’t have any intention of dying, not even to make it more sporting and entertaining. He muttered something under his breath, making Harry wonder why he hadn’t thought of hearing-enhancing spell… although, of course, then he would hear _everything_ better, even the gibberish uttered through privacy spells… so, he would have to make a hearing-extension charm that focused on a single person… maybe even make a whole slew of senses-enhancing charms-

Fire streamed out of Bela’s mouth and that effectively ended Harry’s contemplations. It licked at the vines, and gleamed in the light, like jewels, with many hues and colours.

“Damn does this plant go down good,” Nydia murmured, her head somehow next to Harry’s before the boy inched away.

While the fire fascinated and attracted all the eyes, the plant controlled by the smug dryad as if by puppeteer strings, resisted. Obviously, it set its sight on a final revenge. Harry admired its pettiness.

Teeth burst through the thick stem, or what was left of it, and Bela cried. A wound. The fire in his mouth dwindled out but he picked up his wand, which he had dropped in his moment of pain, and cast a spell that incinerated the petty piece of greenery entirely.

“Weird to see a vampire who prefers fire-based spells to the water-based ones,” Nydia commented. Harry wondered how often she attended these things because so far she seemed knowledgeable and informed.

She caught his gaze.

“Don’t look at me, we actually learnt this at school. I went to the branch of Senex specifically for younger beings, not as dangerous. Believe me, though, sometimes I really wished someone would come and kill me, especially after I had to write my first History essay.”

At this, Harry snapped. “Shut up. You can’t know true boredom in History unless you’ve experienced Binns.”

Another explosion, this one coming from underground, didn’t allow him to finish.

He gasped when he saw another plant… but this one made the other one look like child’s play. It wasn’t simply thorny and with teeth, oh no. It had eyes. Not your average cute eyes that you dropped into the cold-curing potion, but gigantic thorn-framed monsters that glowered and produced small clouds of green gas.

Judging by Bela’s paling, the vampire recognised the plant and realised that the trophy wouldn’t be his that day.

Meanwhile, Harry only saw another confirmation of how powerful Elemental Magic was. Of course, there was no guarantee that he would ever be able to cast a spell this powerful, because the power of someone’s Elemental Magic usually depended on their raw magical force, and his was pretty average. However, he could do what he usually did: invent. New ways, new spells, new rituals, new ways to power up and leave everyone else in the dust.

One element usually was stronger than the others, and Harry doubted that the earth would be his. He had stumbled across a text defining the major character traits for the wielder of each element, and he recognised very little of the featured there traits in himself.

He couldn’t wait for his first class.

_It’s so strange how I can’t identify at all with all those idiots who want to have endless vacation and never go back to school_ , he thought with a touch of amusement. _How can I resist this allure of knowledge?_

Bela put up a worthy fight. He summoned a local rain of acid, he summoned little creatures of blood and earth. He breathed fire, he breathed ice. He cast curses, he cast Dark Magic. But the plant acted as many weapons and it _evolved_. It learnt from every attack: after he attacked it with fire, it covered itself with a protective sheen. After he assaulted it with a knife of charmed obsidian, it went transparent, and the knife passed through.

Of course, not the plant was sentient but the dryad controlling it. Nydia told Harry quietly that dryads could see and enter the mind of any flower, and tree, any bush, and this dryad obviously used her specialty.

The plant pushed, and another of Bela’s shields shattered. He lost. Harry, however, didn’t miss the smile on his face and the nod of respect he sent the dryad. They bowed to each other.

The crowd roared as it hadn’t roared before, drowning out the names of the participants entirely.

Nydia shouted something but Harry didn’t hear and wasn’t trying to: Bela caught his gaze and made him a sign.

  

* * *

 

 

It would have been plain pathetic to get lost again, but Harry managed not to stoop so low. He did, however, bump into the other just when he was coming out of the shower. The changing room where Bela had told him to meet up were empty outside of them.

Harry’s eyes travelled down the vampire’s pale chest, stopping briefly on a ragged scar before Bela pulled on a shirt.

“I hope your wandering eyes are a sign my charms are working?”

Harry flushed before raising his head proudly.

“You made me meet you here on purpose,” Harry accused before snorting. “Did you wait behind the door, half-naked, for the sound of my footsteps?”

“You are overestimating yourself, sweetheart.” Bela winked. “Of course I didn’t wait behind the door… but I might have spent a bit longer in the shower than I usually do.” A salacious smirk.

“Let’s pretend you meant this in an appropriate sense.”

Bela sighed, turning around to summon an overrobe and throwing it lightly over his shoulders.

“What I wouldn’t do for your sensibilities.”

“Well, I can name at least one thing: stop doing something all the inappropriate stuff? I mean, you’ve just met me.”

“We’ve had a conversation or two. That’s already almost best buds.”

“Wow, you do remind me of a friend of mine.” Harry’s heart panged at the thought of Luna. He hadn’t communicated the news of his transfer to her, and while he wasn’t as close to her as he was to Hermione and Terry, she had been valuable support to him in Ravenclaw, despite being younger. “She thinks that anyone who’s not stealing her shoes is already a friend.”

“At least they aren’t an enemy that’s for sure. I think I like your friend.”

By now Bela had finished gathering the things he had strewn around the changing room, and was holding his battles robes hanging off his arm. He motioned for Harry to follow him out.

“You don’t seem too unhappy with your loss,” Harry remarked as they went down a corridor he recognised, the one leading outside, to the puzzling world of dimension charms and overlapping spaces.

“She was an amazing competitor.” Bela smiled, dimples on his cheeks. “I read the list of participants before the tournament and knew she would be there, and knew she was exactly the kind of person I wouldn’t mind losing to.” He frowned. “Of course, that wasn’t my first thought. My first thought was ‘Why the hell do I have to fight against a dryad’?”

“All of them are this powerful?”

Harry was making a mental note to stay away from charming ladies with green moss-covered skin and tree branches in their hair.

“Most, yeah. Fighting them is ridiculously hard for a vamp because, one, they’re resistant to blood magic. Two, they’re almost as resistant to most water-based magic-“

And here’s the mystery solved.

But Harry was petty enough not to mention the solution to Nydia.

“-And three, you can’t get to them because they’re protected by all those blasted predatory veggies they summon, which won’t go away until the dryad does. See my dilemma?”

Bela made ridiculously sad puppy eyes, and Harry laughed.

“Poor dear,” he mocked. “Maybe reconsider entering this type of competition next time?”

“No way,” Bela deadpanned. “It’s amazingly fun.” His eyes brightened and he swept the courtyard in front of them with a wide gesture. “All those opponents you can go up against, all those new tricks you learn… Besides, dryads are rare, so I was just unlucky. Just see who’ll win next year.”

“Well, you weren’t horrible,” Harry conceded, thinking to himself that some of the spells had been amazing, not to mention the whole blood magic thing. He envied vampires for possessing that branch and rarely transmitting it to humans. There was bound to be a vampire in the Potter line but did Harry even get a whiff of the talent? No.

“I haven’t known you for long but I can already recognise that this passes for standing ovation in your speak.”

“You’re too vain if you want me to sing you praises.”

“It’s not like vanity is bad.”

Harry gave him a look.

“It is.” The human wizard sighed. “But don’t worry, it’s bad but we’re in this together.”

Harry knew perfectly well his failings.

“Doing bad things is considered sinning, right?” Bela sprung the question on his. Harry frowned, wanting to find out how the vampire even knew the human term before Bela interrupted him, “So you’re basically saying you want to sin with me?”

Harry didn’t generally throw punches (well, only magical ones, and only on the people who deserved it… or annoyed him) but this was the time he dearly wished to. Bela read that in his eyes and ouch’d.

“I would rather prefer,” Harry started, stepping over a stream of trickling water, another product of the warped dimension magic in the inner courtyard of the castle. “If you explained some of your moves to me.”

“Oh.” Bela blinked before wrapping his fingers around Harry’s arm and looming over him, emphasizing the height difference even though Harry wasn’t short. “We could also duel each other, you know, to let you get in some hands-on experience?”

Harry grimaced. “I’m not really into… this type of stuff.”

Running, dodging, ducking, swivelling… who would want that?

Harry just wanted to read up on new spells, and discover chants in old books, and invent hexes, and analyse their structure… The same with potions. With rituals. He loved the workings of magic and, hell yeah, he loved casting incantations, but he didn’t need to duel someone to get that power rush.

“You don’t want to learn to duel?”

“Not really.”

“It’ll help you protect yourself. You’re so stunning. You will need it at one point.”

Harry didn’t see what one had to do with the other, but he supposed Avalon’s beings were just weird.

“Perhaps. But actually, rather than duel an offender, I would prefer to carry an artefact or charm my robes in such a way that they would reflect an attack without my having to lift a finger.”

_Don’t I have some notes on that in the box on the windowsill?_

“Automatic defences…” Bela hummed musingly. “I’ve clawed my way up the duelling ranks thanks to my offence, so my defence spells and theory are rather shoddy, but even I can recognise that what you’re talking about can be tricky to implement.”

“The problem with automatically triggered spellwork is to figure out how to make it react to a _particular_ type of spell,” Harry muttered. His hands obtained a life of their own and moved in wide gestures to emphasize his points. “I mean, it sounds good when you say it like this ‘Oh, I just want to protect myself against an attack’ but in reality, what constitutes an attack? Do you spell your robes against Dark Magic?”

He snorted and shook his head before raising his chin to the scraps of the sky peeking through a maze of wisteria branches overhead. He missed the admiration sent his way, the caressing gaze.

“But there are hundreds of classifications of Dark Magic and thousands of exceptions, and a lot of them regard stronger healing charms as Dark Arts. So, if you’re wounded, you may end up without help. Do you protect yourself against the more common curses, jinxes, and hexes? Your opponent may uncover something more obscure in grimoires and fling it at you. And, no matter what some pagan religions say, magic is not a sentient being. You can’t have a heart-to-heart with it and kindly ask it to defend you.”

Harry let his words hang in the air between them, finally catching Bela’s stare. The vampire preferred to smile rather than be embarrassed.

“You could try viewing it like setting up moving wards,” he offered. Seemed like despite his staring, he _listened_ to Harry as well. Good. The boy despised people who only looked at him and dismissed what he said. “Except that they would be anchored to an object rather than cast as a spell.”

“It wouldn’t be strong enough. Wards are powerful because of their immobility, especially those surrounding territories. They’re reinforced by anchors and keystones at the very least. Old families also soak theirs in blood rituals and other magic to strengthen protections for a family that has been living there for centuries-“ Harry stopped. “By the way, what you did today was similar to what I’m talking about. While your wards weren’t sentient, they looked flexible. What’s your secret?”

“You really want to know?” A strange smile pulled on the corners of Bela’s lips. “Blood, of course.”

Harry nodded, confirming his earlier hunch. He asked more questions, and Bela replied them, and their walk back to Harry’s dorms went surprisingly well. He almost felt like at Hogwarts, when chatting with Hermione about the different ways to do their homework, or with Terry on the nature of something discussed in an essay. Maybe he just felt at home around knowledgeable people.

 

* * *

 

 

School year was nearing, and Harry did what any self-respecting students who were just a teensy bit inept with directions would do: he went in search of his future classrooms. They were situated close to each other, probably made this way on purpose for the first years.

Two exceptions.

The first, Professor Vesperus Jude’s classroom, situated on the very top of a tower, reached by surmounting thousands of inconvenient narrowstairs. The wind played with the hem of his robes when Harry finally stepped onto the last one, and chill settled in his bones. And he had thought Snape sadistic. He armed himself with half a dozen warming charms just to conquer the stairs.

A pattern of charms locked the door tight, and while Harry recognised many threads in the warding knot, he didn’t venture into a breaking-and-entering attempt. Maybe later, if he ever wanted a creative way to get himself killed.

It took him almost an hour to find the other classroom, accessed through a corridor hidden in the tree-shade. He would have never guessed it to be there if the map hadn’t insisted on its existence. Several point-me charms agreed with it.

He stopped to read the noticeboard hanging by the side of the door, cast iron with coloured glass. The announcements contained the usual: lists of students, lists of projects, lists of winners, of tutors, of resources, schedules of Guild visits…

Harry concentrated and conjured a piece of parchment and a quill to jot down the relevant information. He didn’t note down everything yet, since he wasn’t sure whether he had the talent to pass, but he wanted to flip through some of the most informative material to prepare himself beforehand.

Just as he put down the last word, the door swung open. Harry flinched, looked… and wished he had stayed at home.

Willowy, with slanted eyes as brown as the middle of a coneflower and chin-length hair as yellow as a sunflower’s petals, the man stole Harry’s breath away.

_Why the heck do all the teachers here do this to me?_

“Are you looking for something specific?” he asked in a melodious voice that had a special quality giving him almost trilling undertones that didn’t diminish its beauty.

Harry mentally slapped himself.

_No way, Potter, you’re not going down that territory. First his voice is beautiful, then… other parts of his body._

Harry refused to look lower than the middle of the professor’s forehead, refused to blush, and refused to be like all those people around Lockhart when the wizard had come to teach them the Obliviate charm. It had been a bit of a mistake on man’s part, since it uncovered the fact that all his adventures were lies, and the whole affair left many people broken hearted.

“Oh no, I was just reading. If I pass the test, I’ll be in this course, so…”

Harry shrugged awkwardly and wished he were in his dorm rooms. They hadn’t become a home yet, strange and foreign as the furniture was, but even that was better than standing there awkwardly with a being who might be his future professor and not knowing what to say.

“Great! There are not many students in this field. Every new addition is welcome. Here, come. You may call me Professor Iverbloom. What is your name?”

“Harry Potter, sir.”

“A great pleasure to meet you.” The being winked. “I’m free at the moment, so if you want to take the entrance test and find out now, I don’t mind. The fewer students there are to test, the sooner the first lesson will be over and I can go back to things infinitely more pleasant than teaching you.”

Harry wondered if it was quite appropriate for a teacher to want his lesson to pass quicker but then decided that if the students were allowed to long for the break, why not the teachers?

The place they entered counted among the most beautiful Harry had seen. A clearing surrounded by a firm wall of trees, their branches elongated, intertwined and forming a ceiling from which there hung lamps of cast-iron moulded like lace and coloured glass. No desks. No chairs. In their stead there was scattered a dozen of overgrown mushrooms shaped vaguely like bean chairs Harry had seen in a rare muggle magazine he had found when sneaking about Lavender’s room.

The male – an elf by the looks of things – laughed melodiously at the expression of shock on Harry’s face.

“I favour open spaces rather than offices. Not only do they strengthen the ambient magic, they also let you relax, which is an intrinsic feature of Elemental magic preparation.” He smirked. “Well, unless I’m feeling particularly sadistic that day and lead you to more, ah, trying locations.”

His angelic smile didn’t promise anything good.

“What would those locations be, sir?” Harry kept his voice vaguely curious but not prying, and above all – respectful.

The teachers in Harry life divided into two categories: those who preferred when the student treated them informally, and those who wanted students to remember their place (and then there was Snape, of course, but let’s leave sad things aside).  Harry tried to be something in the middle, but always better to err on the side of formality and flattery.

“If you do end up in my course, you’ll find out… and they’ll stick in your mind,” Professor Iverbloom said. Harry resisted the urge to mention that he didn’t trust anything with this description. “Now, you are here for the test.”

Harry nodded.

“Please sit down and make yourself at home.” The teacher waved at one of the mushrooms. Harry lowered himself warily but the, um, seat turned out to be surprisingly comfy and didn’t break under his arse. “As I have said, as an initiate, you should strive to keep your body relaxed. It’s a bit like Occlumency.”

Harry grimaced.

_It doesn’t exactly make me feel better._

The teacher laughed, that lovely trilling sound again.

“I see that Occlumency isn’t your forte?” he asked with amusement. “Doesn’t matter. Believe me, the test is the most boring part of the course, so, chill.”

The elf sashayed to one of the trees (all of which had unknown runes inscribed on the bark in white paint) and tapped it. An opening appeared and widened until Harry saw a shelf filled with many small stones. Professor Ailill Iverbloom (Harry finally remembered his full name from reading it on his time-table) returned with four of them.

He sat down right on the grass in front of Harry’s feet. The boy widened his eyes, awkward and bothered.

“Here,” the teacher said and clutched Harry’s hand, pressing the stones into his palm. His fingers radiated warmth. Harry’s cheeks flushed and he wanted to tear his hand away, even as Professor Iverbloom sent him a knowing look, understanding perfectly well what he caused, the bastard.

_Seems like I’m about to get my second most-hated teacher._

“Close your eyes,” Professor Iverbloom instructed that voice that sounded like a stroking melody. “And concentrate. Each of these stones represents an element. While everyone has one element that favours them, a lot of people can use all of them in their basic form. However, there are also many people who can use the basic forms of only one or two. So, the purpose of this test is not only to find out whether you are capable of elemental magic at all but also to work out how many elements you can handle.”

With his eyes closed, Harry made out all the nuance and cadences of the teacher’s voice, heard birds chirping to accompany it, shivered at the elf’s fingers caressing the inside of his palm lightly…

He also felt something else.

The stones.

Each of them stood out on his palm, each distinguished by a peculiar sensation.

The first was very light. Harry had thought there were only three of them, in fact, until he concentrated and wondered how he hadn’t felt it sooner. This presence slipped away and teased, almost moving like a light breeze.

“Air,” his lips opened to whisper without his will guiding them. His mind tracked the sensation, playing with it and-

The teacher’s fingers tightened, pulling him back. Right. It wasn’t over.

He pushed the air element away and searched for the next presence.

It was waiting for him, and impatiently. He winced when the stone _burnt_ , he almost smelt charred skin, and he almost tossed it away, and something must have given his desire away because-

“Breathe. _Relax_.”

His teacher’s voice, a melody anchoring him back to the earth like a caress in his mind.

Harry mentally stepped away from the fire, and it _pouted_ at him like a living being.

He stepped away right into the cooling embrace of water, which engulfed and swamped around him like waves. The feel of liquid in his palm. A smell in his nose that reminded him of Nydia, of oceans and seaweed. His ears filled with dull humming as if someone pressed seashells to both.

This time, Harry didn’t need his teacher to help him pull away. The waters parted reluctantly, but parted still, and allowed him to seek out the last element: earth.

It weighed down in his palm, as if that one stone was heavier than all the others combines. The image of that dryad’s plant emerged in his mind, then the recollections of Herbology lessons with Hermione and Terry, the smell of soil and flowers…

The memories were harder to push away than the presence of the earth element, but Harry managed both. Pride sparked in his chest. He opened his eyes with a happy smile.

“I felt all of them,” he gushed out, unable to contain himself.

“So it seems. You’re one of the lucky ones.” Professor Iverbloom tightened his fingers around Harry’s hand for the final time before letting go and stood up. He loomed over Harry. “Harry Potter, right? I’ll have to scribble an ‘accepted’ next to your name. Don’t bother to show up for the first lesson.”

“I chose the right moment to drop by, it seems,” Harry remarked, standing up. He was prepared to bid the professor goodbye and leave when the elf’s hand stopped him.

“Wait, don’t go-“

The door blasted open and a tiny goblin-like creature with red leather skin and small wings, which barely supported its weight, burst into the classroom.

“Master Ailill, Master Ailill!” it squeaked out, its button-like yellow eyes glowering and _literally_ spitting fire in bursts of sparks. “Master Vesperus reminds Master Ailill that he is to be present at the staff meeting in five minutes and no, ‘I have better things to do, such as giving a funeral to all the fucks that I don’t give about your paperwork’ is not an excuse to miss it!”

Harry choked on his spit at hearing obscenity coming out of the creature that looked like a very angry, very ugly baby gone wrong.

The elf teacher, whose melodious voice could apparently say rather unmelodious things, straightened.

“Tell your master that this time I have a valid reason for my absence.” He lifted his chin and motioned at Harry. “I have a _student_ to teach, and what are teachers for if not for transmitting our valuable knowledge?”

“But Master Ailill-“ it started in a helpless voice.

“No, no, no. No word from you, Imp.” The elf shook his head severely, his chin-length blond hair moving. “If teaching this poor ignorant boy requires me to forego a staff meeting, this is a sacrifice I will gladly make.” He raised his slender fingers to his forehead in an elegant gesture. “As all teachers worth their salt, I’m a true martyr.”

The- imp’s? wings dropped morosely and it plunged towards the ground. “Master Vesperus will be sad,” it whined, almost…

_Is it crying?_ Harry, stumped, observed as grass hissed and disintegrated under fat droplets, as if under the onslaught of acid.

“My vocation is to teach, not to make Deputy Headmasters happy,” Professor Iverbloom told it gently before kicking the poor thing out. Literally. With a wave of a twig – it was too unpolished to call it a wand – the elf slammed the door shut before wiping his boot. He sighed. “Well, wait a few minutes more here and then you’re free to go. Nasty business, those imps.”

Harry stared.

Professor Iverbloom retained his proud and vaguely indignant pose.

Harry stared some more. Then he narrowed his eyes.

“ _That’s_ why you wanted me here,” he semi-accused. “You needed me as an excuse to avoid work!”

The elf looked sullen. “Avoiding responsibilities never makes people unhappy. Besides, it’s not like only students are allowed to skip,” he muttered. Harry hadn’t seen such deplorable work ethics in anyone, and he knew Sirius Black!

“This is horrible,” he couldn’t quite contain himself. “You can’t just- How can you _skip work_?”

“Well, the same way you skip… lessons…“ Professor Iverbloom floundered when Harry’s stare didn’t change. He groaned. “Oh please, don’t tell me you’re one of those lunatics who attend every class and do all homework unless they have a truly valid reason not to?”

“Well, yes, that’s _how school works_.”

The elf plopped down on a bean armchair-like mushroom, devastated.

“Why do I always get ambitious and motivated ones?”

 

* * *

 

 

The Welcoming Feast began, and Harry was feeling lonely.

The ceremony held place in the courtyard rather than the canteen, and it was decorated beautifully with garlands and lanterns and strings of talismans, but the beauty paled before the wave of loneliness that swept over Harry as soon as he sat down, alone.

The first Welcoming Feast with no Hermione, or Terry, or Luna by his side. He never expected it to _hurt_ so much.

The pain worsened when he looked around the clearing and found Nydia surrounded by a group of nymphs, Galvane from the Deputy’s office who looked healthier and happier than earlier, Bela with a couple of friends…

The Deputy Headmaster began his speech. Harry focused on it, hoping that if he gave all his attention to his words, it would blur out all the other feelings in his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Harry, I wish I had your work ethic.
> 
> Next chapter: we get to see Vesperus Jude as a professor (if you think he's gonna make Harry's life easier, hint: think again), Potions class, some of the political structure, spell-crafting, and, well, what's Harry's life without a confrontation with charming people who want roughen him up a bit?
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading this! Drop me a line or two if you want to see more (or if you want me to bury this story back into the recesses of my sick mind whence it came lol).


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